US Military Explored Hiring Bloggers As Propagandists 355
Zeinfeld writes "Wired reports that one time Clipper Chip supporter Dorothy Denning wrote a report on using blogs for information warfare in 2006 (a report available from cryptome). Amongst the proposals were hiring bloggers directly as propaganda agents and using military media resources to 'make' a blogger posting favorable material. Notably, and most unfortunately absent from the report, is the very real question of whether the military should be manipulating domestic media." Is meme warfare just another battleground, or is this dirty pool?
Just another form of media... (Score:5, Informative)
Someone [xkcd.com] is going to be very busy...
So what's new? (Score:5, Informative)
How on earth anyone could be shocked by this at this point is beyond me. This kind of stuff is fairly benign next to the kind of stuff they do in SECRET. It's when they actually start talking about killing reporters to silence dissent [wikipedia.org] that they REALLY get nasty.
Just pay DailyKos.com! (Score:1, Informative)
Of course, it might not be a good idea. Every candidate endorsed by dailykos has gone down to defeat.
Re:The military decided it wasn't worth paying for (Score:3, Informative)
Well, dailykos.com is on the record saying that they take money to endorse candidates.
Four-Minute Men (Score:3, Informative)
Unethical? Try illegal. (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention the legality... The Hatch act still exists, to the best of my knowledge. And although people generally interpret it somewhat more liberally than intended, this seems like exactly the form of corruption targetted thereby... The executive branch, using federal funds to make the war look better, to improve the chances of McCain getting in come November.
Then again, since when has the current administration bothered with obeying all those pesky little laws? "Four more years - Why should the constitution matter this time?"
Re:Just another form of media... (Score:3, Informative)
binaryspiral wrote:
They were "lured" into this because it used to be almost exclusively true, but once the medium became popular, it became infested (note: it could be I'm editorializing here) with pseudo-human beings, hired to push different products and causes.
The question, I would say, is how is the on-line community going to react to this? Are you happy with the state of affairs where hundreds of "slashdot users" could be sock puppet accounts run by Karl Rove and/or Microsoft?
And still another question, of course involves the dubious (at best) legality and ethics of this practice. You're marketing department may think it's cute to pretend it's a horde of sincere fans of your products ("guerrilla marketing"), but your customers may not enjoy being deceived. What exactly is the difference between this behavior and "fraud", eh?
And when it's the government involved, there are additional legal restrictions in-play (e.g The Hatch Act). The incumbent has a big enough advantage already without being able to treat government agencies as publicly-funded campaign organizations.
(A reminder to the kids in the audience: there are rules the government is supposed to follow. I admit it often doesn't seem like that under the Bush regime and it's enablers in congress.)
Re:The Future of Warfare (Score:5, Informative)
You are entirely right. But it appears that they (the rich people who run our plutocracy) have been pulling this disgusting stuff for most of my life, or more likely since before I was born.
And people wonder why I don't want to vote Democrat or Republican! How can we change our plutocratic republic back into a democratic republic?
-mcgrew
Re:The Future of Warfare (Score:2, Informative)
American Heritage Dictionary
propaganda
n.
1) The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.
2) Material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause: wartime propaganda.
3) Propaganda Roman Catholic Church A division of the Roman Curia that has authority in the matter of preaching the gospel, of establishing the Church in non-Christian countries, and of administering Church missions in territories where there is no properly organized hierarchy.
Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_home_front_during_World_War_II#Propaganda_and_culture [wikipedia.org]
Key sentence from the further reading: "By definition, wartime posters are naturally propagandistic".
Re:Cool (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Cool (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.mediaresearch.org/biasbasics/biasbasics3.asp [mediaresearch.org]
* More than half of the journalists surveyed (52%) said they voted for Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election, while fewer than one-fifth (19%) said they voted for Republican George W. Bush. The public chose Bush, 51 to 48 percent.
* When asked "generally speaking, do you consider yourself a Democrat, Republican, an Independent, or something else?" more than three times as many journalists (33%) said they were Democrats than said they were Republicans (10%).