Thanks for this post, and for your attention to this issue.
Addressing "astroturfers" raises a lot of complcated questions
about privacy and free speech. If you learned that (e.g.) a
self-identified feminist blogger who described herself as 50 years
old, widowed with five children, undergoing treatment for cancer
survivor, was actually a healthy seventeen year old boy, what would
you do? Ban comments fom this person, surely, but would you warn
other bloggers? How would you go about this? Although in the U.S.
there isn't much in the way of law to support this claim, many
bloggers believe they have a legal right to be and remain
anonymous, and to "role play" by misrepresenting things about
themselves in terms of their online personas.
Many companies and industry groups will enthusiastically hire
failed or burned out academics from social science fields, because
having been teachers, and knowing their fields, they can be very
effective communicators for certain viewpoints. Anthropologists are
particularly sought after by industry, or so I am told.
Online "persuasion" has been used to manipulate srock prices, to
solicit donations for people who are not suffering from the poverty
or illness they clalim to be, and of course to "market" good and
services.
"Soft persuasion" may be a slightly different phenomenon. I'm sure
that some of the people who receive "consulting fees" to help "get
a message out there" can convince themselves that they are actually
acting for the better good by doing so. When they are "persuading"
a group of people who generally dedicated to inclusivity and
tolerance of opposing viewpoints, they may obtain a lot of
traction.
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