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Government Trolls Manipulating Citizens
After the now infamous oil spill in the gulf coast, BP found itself stuck in a sh*t-storm of negative PR with seemingly little options. Rather than battening down the hatches, and just weathering it out until everyone’s attention moved onto the next exciting news coverage, BP decided to get its hands oily.
BP hired the PR firm Oglivy and Mather to coordinate their way out of the storm through carefully learned, though not always elegant, tactics of influencing opinion on social media sites. Being as Facebook is the largest of the social media sites, it is predictable that Oglivy and Mather focused much of their attention there.
When someone took it upon themselves to repeatedly post comments critical of BP, the way the were handling the cleanup, or just the “evil corporations out to get us” type of comments in general, Oglivy and Mather would swoop in to the rescue. They would smother comments of insult with comments of praise or humble forgiveness. If you said BP was acting as if the were unaccountable for environmental destruction concerned only about getting out of this cheaply, several of Oligvy and Mather’s fake Facebook profiles would hit right back your comment, distracting from the topic of the original post.
Who, among online users, has been known to seek to distract from original topics within conversation? Trolls. That is, basically, what Oligvy and Mathers were, on behalf of BP; corporate trolls hired to the dissuade negative discussion of BP.
