Political spinning rife with bloggers

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Nov 7, 2006 | by Julia Scott

Wanted: "The right person to publicize our pro-consumer service by providing a helpful presence in several Internet communities. We are looking for somebody who is familiar with Internet forums, message boards, and blogs."

So reads a recent Craigslist posting by a Palo Alto startup company intent on using a new marketing scheme: paying a blogger to infiltrate an online community with positive product messages. Honest bloggers identify who they're working for, but many don't. The technique, known as viral marketing, isn't limited to companies. It has proven so effective that politicians and consulting firms have begun using it to gain an edge in close campaigns.

Whether the goal is to sway opinion on a key local ballot measure or to counter negative public perception of a company with positive spin, public blogs and Web forums are increasingly seen as an inexpensive, effective way to get "grassroots" messages out to a hand-picked community.

In one example, two bloggers were hired by South Dakota Republican Sen. Don Thune to attack his opponent, Democratic incumbent TomDaschle, on two leading local blogs during the 2004 election campaign. The bloggers, who were also paid advisers for the Thune campaign, are partly credited with Thune's victory over Daschle. But they never disclosed their relationship to the senator, which was later revealed in Federal Election Commission filings.

This unregulated form of campaign- or corporate-financed online commentary subverts the Web's free-thinking, democratic purpose, said Geoffrey Bowker, director of the Center for Science, Technology and Society at Santa Clara University.

"It's turning what was an open discussion forum into a marketing space. It turns it from a trusted medium into an untrusted medium," said Bowker. "It's a dishonest practice."

The practice isn't limited to major national races, either. In August, members of an online public discussion list for all things Pacifica 'outed' a couple named "Jimmy" and "Susan" who posted comments to the list enthusiastically endorsing a developer's proposal to turn the Pacifica quarry into a mixed-use housing and commercial complex. Pacifica residents vote on Measure L, the quarry proposal, today.

The couple, who claimed to live in Pacifica, posted messages separately using the same e-mail address. This aroused suspicion from local resident Larry Rosenstein, who traced their messages back to an IP address belonging to Davies Communications, a Santa Barbara and Lompoc-based public relations firm hired by the developer to promote Measure L. "Jimmy" and "Susan" stopped posting a few days later.

Rosenstein was surprised that the PR firm allegedly went so far to bolster grassroots support for the quarry measure. Subsequent new list members are now "given the third degree" as a result of the experience, he said.

"I didn't expect such a blatant stunt. Since most people would not think of doing something like this themselves, when it actually happens. it is surprising, even though it's not uncommon," Rosenstein said.

John Davies, CEO of Davies Communications, denied knowing of any employee who had taken the initiative to post to the Pacifica list. If anyone had posted to the list, said Davies, it was an intern, and it would have been a breach in ethics.

Coincidentally, Pacifica's experience has a lot in common with a recent incident in New Hampshire, where a staff member to Republican Congressman Charles Bass was caught posing as a progressive on several liberal political blogs this September that favored Bass' challenger, Democrat Paul Hodes. The blogger, posting under the pseudonym "IndieNH," tried to divert support for Hodes by suggesting Democrats invest their time and resources in other state races. When some fellow bloggers traced the comments back to an originating IP address in the U.S. House of Representatives, the postings ceased. Then the story came out in the papers, and the staffer was fired.

Congressional staffers also made more than 1,000 alterations to politicians' biographies in Wikipedia.com, a publicly-edited online encyclopedia, in the latter half of 2005, according to a report from the Lowell Sun in Massachusetts. Some had the goal of embellishing their bosses' reputations, while others sought to insult their opponents. One anonymous House staffer changed the record to read that Virginia Congressman Eric Cantos "smells of cow dung."

Unlike campaign fliers or political advertisements on television, there is no legal precedent or even a blogger's code of ethics to constrain bloggers trolling Web sites with a hidden agenda, said Bowker.

"We're in a transitional period right now where we need to set up rules for just and equitable discourse. If it's coming out of a marketing company or a particular campaign, that campaign should be open about it," he said.

Several PR firms have officially condemned such practices as deceptive and coercive. The Public Relations Society of America issued a memo against viral marketing and anonymous posting in 2004, but compliance by member groups is voluntary and carries no repercussions.