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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?
So there will finally be propagando to counter the countless other bloggers who spew out nonsense about the war.
Blogging is just another form of published media - it can be used for any reason. People have just been lured into believing blogs are personal posts from individuals.
Someone is going to be very busy...
While we think propaganda is bad, the alternative is almost always worse. Gandhi never thought we'd rid ourselves of conflict, but instead envisioned wars in his utopia being fought by "propaganda armies". In the same way, would we prefer the army to use propaganda on its own citizens to convince us of its message or perhaps we would prefer being thrown in a secret prison for descent? Also, would anyone really have a problem with this if said bloggers were clearly labeled rather than astro-turfing?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Most bloggers on the right do it for free.
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 that they REALLY get nasty.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This is just basically an updated version of dropping propaganda phamplets from air planes, just it's a digital format instead of analog.
I don't know what country you guys are from, but this would never happen in my beloved U.S. of A. We're above that kind of thing.
C'mon folks, if you're getting your "hard facts" from blogs, you're already toast. Everybody has an agenda, it's just that some folks get paid for it. Don't think of them as military propaganda arms, think of them as paid public lobbiests (aka astroturfers) . Whole different form of slime, but slime nonetheless.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Notably, and most unfortunately absent from the report, is the very real question of whether the military should be manipulating domestic media.
The rest of our media is manipulated...why not blogs? Compared to the other forms of media, blogs are notoriously easy to manipulate. With the ever-growing cacophony of voices on the internet, it's more and more difficult for Joe Sixpack to adequately fact-check a given story...so they increasingly just believe what they hear from their mouthpiece of choice. I personally have to debunk all of the ridiculous stories my wife's family mindlessly forwards around to each other without question....the latest was that Obama is Muslim.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
And just what makes you think they're doing it for free?
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
If the military hired bloggers post mostly postive news stories that's fine, because typically those stories are completely ignored by main stream media.
The problems begin if they start putting heavy spin on bad news to make it sound good, fabricating stories, or pretend there is no bad news and not report it, then we have a problem.
This doesn't seem to compare to "Operation Mass Appeal" which was a programme by M16 to plant stories in the British media in the run up to the Iraq War. They needn't have bothered really though since the Mainstream Media is quite capable of printing flimsy government accusations as fact without the intervention of the Secret Service.
. . . to place their propaganda on the internet (ahem, Huffington Post, DailyKos, etc, ad nauseum), then why can't the military use bloggers to post its point of view?
Seems like another double-standard to me.
What?
And just what makes you think they're doing it for free?
Well, dailykos.com is on the record saying that they take money to endorse candidates.
Is, to some extant, against the tenants of democracy. My reading on democracy is that there are rules about what people are allowed to do to eachother physically, but no rules about memes. I think it's questionable as to whether using physically coercive means such as taxes to further memetic warfare directed at our own citizens is at all valid within this framework. The government here is trying to enforce rules about memes on its own citizens.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
i just wonder at the point of criticizing the usa alone for what every country does, has ever done, and will always do
american?
american?
american?
american?
all of your complaints are valid in the context of bad HUMAN nature. they are invalid in the context of bad AMERICAN nature. what is the intellectual value in your mind of prosecuting the usa alone for crimes all of humanity is guilty of?
you need to be morally and intellectually honest. or you are just another useless pointless partisan. the world has enough of those and their tribal venom
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It goes back, formally, at least to Woodrow Wilson and his Committee on Public Information. They recruited 75,000 - 100,000 (called Four-Minute Men) volunteers to give four-minute speeches supporting the case for war against Germany - including before hostilities between the nations.
Notably, and most unfortunately absent from the report, is the very real question of whether the military should be manipulating domestic media.
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?"
You think the Free Republic is on the side of the government? Do, please, go back to your universe ... you aren't welcome here.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
During the Kosovo crisis Serbian State TV (equivalent to the BBC) was showing the effects of NATO bombing on civilians. To stop this NATO bombed the Serbian State TV station killing 15 civilians. NATO justified this by saying that the station was a tool of propaganda. By this rational, if the US/UK go to war with Iran, the BBC and many American news outlets will be viable targets. General Wesley Clark was confronted with this war crime during a conference and he seemed very sheepish about it and resorted to saying that his orders had come from the top.
The big difference is that on the Internet, everything you read is true.
The other difference is on the Internet, nobody can tell that the government is a dog.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
And I'm glad to see that they finally declassified my third military occupation, so now the world can know we milbloggers have been on the front lines in the War On Terror.
Every time you see a foreign propaganda piece in the Saudi Times and read a comment by Al Rashid, that was our brave comrades in arms, fighting the real fight for Democracy.
Every time you read the Pakistani Journal of Objective Theological Criticism and read the online commentary by Pashtun seperatists, it was Chief Petty Officer Nunzia writing that post.
The few, the proud, the frequently anonymous - Blog Warriors!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Ok.
...
Aw, crap!
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I always had a sneaking suspicion that the icanhascheezburger cats were just TOO pro-America to be real. Now I understand.
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
Oh, thank god. I though I might have to take responsibility for my ridiculous actions and beliefs. Now, I can just blame the government!
I'd much rather have a McEducation or a Pepsi-brand bachelors in the Delicious Arts than this state-sponsored degree teaching me the works of philosophers like Marx, Foucault, Althusser, and Orwell.
Hell, one of them is an editor right here on Slashdot; Pudge is the epitome of a Kool Aid drinking wingnut. The GOP has done backflips on party standards, but usually over the course of a decade, like how important military service is to serve as president when Bill Clinton was running against George H.W. Bush, vs when George W. Bush was running against McCain, Gore, and Kerry. If you think preferential treatment to get W into an Air Guard unit that would never see action and not bothering to show up for duty counts as "service", compare the wingnut response to Ruby Ridge (H.W. had been president for 3 1/2 years and in the White House for 11) to Waco (where Clinton had been in office for 38 days). But Pudge makes old school Republican hypocrisy obsolete - he can change standards between Republicans and Democrats so fast it would shatter the spine of Gumby:
One day he'll bitch about homosexuals "shoving gay marriage down our throats" and the next he'll bitch about regulations on home schooling. There's no libertarian Republican like a selective libertarian Republican. He'll call Barbra Boxer a liar for saying the invasion of Iraq was about "WMD, period" because the invasion was also based on violated U.N. Resolutions - even though almost all of said resolutions dealt with...WMD's. Yet less than a week later he'll talk about the Social Security crisis, nevermind that the "crisis" wouldn't come for almost 40 years, would still pay out 75% benefits, and could be completely prevented by as little as a 1% change in the tax code.
The tactics are not the same.
Bloggers who are anti-fascist aren't airing their opinions for a paycheck, nor are they pretending that they are broadcasting their opinions of their own volition when really there is a man behind the curtain giving direction. One system is honest while the other is structured on an attempt to deceive. There's a big difference. If you align yourself with falsehoods, then that is the kind of world you will inherit.
It would be different if members of the military were blogging their opinions and were open about their affiliations. --Of course, that actually does happen; there are certainly military professionals who post their opinions on line, but while many disagree with those opinions, nobody is accusing them of propaganda since they are not being dishonest about who they really are.
-FL
the government used to hire what they called "two minutemen" to go out into the street dressed like a normal citizen and then give a (roughly) two-minute long speech about how terrible communism was and how great America was. The only thing that has changed is they're now using the internet.
Bad? Yes. Unexpected? No.
But what if someone else kills you because they believed the lies?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
When they open their mouth, they lie.
It's that simple.
They should be forced by law to have "ombudsmen" embedded in every office who can tell the real story without any risk of being disciplined because they're outside the chain of command. The same should apply to every other government office. Of course, the next problem is how to get the "ombudsmen" to tell the truth...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
i would rather someone lie to me than kill me. so bring on the propaganda, from all directions. let it flow freely. beats suicide bombs and bombs from the sky
Except the purpose of the propaganda is to get you to agree that someone else needs to be killed, and that your tax dollars need to be spent to do it.
It is not in any way, shape, or form about reducing the amount of violent conflict. The thing that reduces the amount of violent conflict in our society is the democratic process, whereby leaders who try to get us involved in foolish wars that do nothing but bring misery to the people can be removed from power. Government and military propaganda is designed to counteract the power of democracy by deluding the people into thinking the war is good and just, that the war is going well and should be continued, and finally that if we dare stop the war that even worse things will happen.
In no way was this military plan to spread propaganda through blogs about reducing the number of bombs dropped, of reducing the number of people killed. It was in every sense about increasing the violence.
Still say "bring on the propaganda"?
The enemies of Democracy are
You can't take the sky from me...