nettime's avid reader on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:41:36 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> Sock puppets on Wikipedia |
Koch Industries Employs PR Firm To Airbrush Wikipedia, Gets Banned For Unethical âSock Puppetsâ http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/09/koch-wikipedia-sock-puppet/ Last year, Koch Industries began employing New Media Strategies (NMS), an Internet PR firm that specializes in âword-of-mouth marketingâ for major corporations including Coca-Cola, Burger King, AT&T, Dodge and Ford. It appears that, ever since the NMS contract was inked with Koch, an NMS employee began editing the Wikipedia page for âCharles Koch,â âDavid Koch,â âPolitical activities of the Koch family,â and âThe Science of Successâ (a book written by Charles). Under the moniker of âMBMAdmirer,â NMS employees edited Wikipedia articles to distance the Koch family from the Tea Party movement, to provide baseless comparisons between Koch and conspiracy theories surrounding George Soros, and to generally delete citations to liberal news outlets. After administrators flagged the MBMAdmirer account as a âsock puppetâ â one of many fake accounts used to manipulate new media sites â a subsequent sock puppet investigation found that MBMAdmirer is connected to a number of dummy accounts and ones owned by NMS employees like Jeff Taylor. Soren Dayton, a GOP operative and executive at New Media Strategies, is reported to be the contact for Koch Industries at NMS. Reached by phone yesterday by ThinkProgress, Dayton exclaimed, âIâm not going to talk about this, thanks,â before hanging up. Lyndsey Medsker, a senior account director for NMS, spoke to ThinkProgress today. She explained that NMS also maintains the Koch Industries Twitter page, Facebook page, and has an active team working on promoting Koch Industries in the comment section of blogs and news websites. As ThinkProgress has reported, the billionaire Koch brothers maintain contracts with over a dozen public relation firms and lobbying firms. Pushing back again recent scrutiny, the brothers have also relied on a conservative media infrastructure owned by the Koch brothers or closely linked to them by way of their donor conferences. We have documented how the Koch message machine has targeted ThinkProgress and even placed hit- pieces against a New Yorker journalist investigated the Kochs. But now it seems the Koch brothers are at work manipulating Wikipedia to polish their image. Update: New Media Strategies at one point tried to lie about its affiliation with Koch Industries. The account "MBMAdmirer" wrote in December on Wikipedia: "I am a citizen who has read about and admires the Koch family. I was not pleased with the way that they have been presented in the media. And I thought that I could come to Wikipedia to try to make sure that there are balancing facts. Nothing I do is in coordination with Koch or authorized by Koch. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org