After reading Chapter 9 of "The New Influences" the wheels in my mind starting turning.
If blogging can be so influential would it be possible to turn public opinion intentionally. Now I'm not saying you like a product and then happen to talk about it, but a calculated Internet attack on something. Perhaps the opposite of this is already happening with PR firms where things are being positively reflected.
But I'm thinking in more anarchy-laden ways, perhaps to topple a business or whathaveyou, someone could set up a " Internet task-force" of a handful of people and they could spend a whole day negatively searching and negatively commenting and tagging things until there was a plethora of negative information that would seep its way on the Internet and eventually....the public opinion.
However I would not be surprised if this hasn't already happened.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Definitely. It's like when the Wikiscanner came out that revealed that not only were companies spinning their own pages, but they were also interjecting their competitors' pages with negative comments or with parts that made the editing company sound better. However I don't this this changed any minds since the edits were so blatant (but it probably made people wonder about the conflicting biases on the page).
However, if there were such malicious "task forces" out to discredit a company, it could be a good thing in that they could be voicing a legitimate concern. However I think truly inappropriate messages that are just slander would be found out to be contrived, and thus discredited (ideally). :)
Post a Comment