Military report: secretly ‘recruit or hire bloggers.’

[marmar]

from ThinkProgress:



Military report: secretly ‘recruit or hire bloggers.’»

Noah Shachtman at Danger Room finds a 2006 report written for U.S. Special Operations Command that suggests ways the military should deal with the blogosphere. One suggestion is for the military to hire bloggers to “pass the U.S. message“:

Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence…to pass the U.S. message. … On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.

An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. Still, there are people in the military today who like to blog.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/31/military-report-secretly-recruit-or-hire-bloggers/

[Snarkoleptic]

1. Anyone surprised? crickets...crickets...crickets

[Alpharetta]

2. No surprise at all. There are bloggers for hire

paid by the post. rate depends on the blogger's influence rating, and depending on the client and the paid message.

[Richard Steele]

3. Those of us with assloads of free time have documented the WAVES of them who register here at DU.

They have a "half life"...half are tombstoned almost instantly,
then half of them who remain get canned on their 2nd or 3rd day...
then half of the remainder, etc, etc...

Only 2 or 3 survive for 4 months until the next wave signs up.

Problem is, there have been SEVERAL "waves" since 2006, and we now have
8 or 12 of the best "2 or 3" very slippery trolls from each wave
who are regarded as "Real DUers".

They aren't. Never were, never will be.

They have stars and 1000+ posts, but they aren't DUers.