US Military Explored Hiring Bloggers As Propagandists

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?

Comments

Re:All's Fair In War

[TripMaster Monkey]

Information warfare and propaganda have always been a vital and necessary component of military planning. It's much easier if you can get your enemy to surrender rather than shoot them.

It's our own media that's being manipulated. Are you implying that the citizens are "the enemy"?

Re:So what's new?

[Lumpy]

They are looking nly now for bloggers to do this because it's near he end of President Bush's term. He had been spamming all the blogs and blogging everywhere about pro USA and pro War agendas cince 2001. but because they expect someone to come in the White house that will actually do something other than surf porn, eat hot dogs, and watch frederator podcasts they felt the need to recruit people.

All current posts on the net that is for the war were posted by G.W. Bush himself. That's how dedicated of a president he is.