3. President Richard M. Nixon had White House staffers write
«letters to the editor» to various American newspapers, purporting
to be from ordinary citizens who favored Nixon's policies.
7. Cassius
Brutus
Caesar
I will this night, in several hands, in at his windows throw,
As if they came from several citizens, Writings all tending to the great opinion
That Rome holds of his name; wherein obscurely Caesar's ambition shall be glanced at
william shakespeare - Julius Caesar, 1599
13. Grassroot
A grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community.
The term implies that the creation of the movement
and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous.
14. One whose sole reason for participating
in a discussion or forum is to support,
or express agreement with another participant.
15. A pseudonym used by someone to
distance themselves from their actions,
especially to talk about themselves
in the guise of a neutral observer
22. ‣ Companies now use "persona management software"
‣ This software creates all the online furniture a real person
would possess: a name, email accounts, web pages and
social media.
‣ Fake accounts can be kept updated by automatically
reposting or linking to content generated elsewhere
‣ Human astroturfers can then be assigned these "pre-aged"
accounts to create a back story
‣ Software can create "static IP addresses" for each persona,
enabling different astroturfers "to look like the same person
over time".
‣ The US Army is building such software
27. 网
水
Water army
50 cents party
a group of Internet ghostwriters paid to post
online comments with particular content.
Online Chinese companies, the Chinese Gov. and the Communist
Party of China employ people to make postings on social media
in order to change public opinion.
43. EU Troll Patrol
• 2m€ budget
• Monitoring conversation
• Sentiment Analysis
• Inhouse trained ‘troll patrol’ team
• acting as EU official (no AT here)
52. Steve Huffman
Reddit Cofounder
‘You would go to Reddit
in the early days, the first
couple of months and
there’d be tons of...
fake users’
bit.ly/scpo-09-08