Tricky Political Tactics in Social Media

Anyone following the 2008 U.S. election knows Obama’s campaign team made very effective use of social media. From YouTube videos to appeals for small donation amounts that added up to hundreds of millions. In Canada’s 2011 election Twitter featured front and centre, not so much as a fundraising tool but as ongoing commentary. But there is a darker side to how social media is used in political campaigns. We take a quick look at some tactics we’re sure to see in the 2012 election. Some are tactics used in quasi-democratic states as well.

Sockpuppeting: In our research projects, we’ve come across this one the most. This is where an individual creates one or more sets of false identities online. These identities are then used to create negative or inflammatory commentary against an opposing political party but appear to be disconnected from a political party. Heavily used in the US, UK and Canada. Sometimes it is just an individual or organization that is aligned to an issue such as environmentalism or a union. This tactic is also known as meatpuppets and sometimes used in stealth marketing.

DeepPersona**: We’ve coined this one ourselves. This is sockpuppeting taken to the next level. One person will likely control between 2-5 personalities. Unlike sockpuppeting where the “identity” is shallow, usually just a fake name and email, in this case they may build deeper histories and profiles across multiple sites and services. These are to provide greater authenticity, although they collapse under scrutiny. In our research we often find these to be used in less democratic countries. They may also be used to influence diaspora or foreign policy in other states.

Cyber Astroturfing: Taken from the long-time practice of astroturfing where a political group rallies a large number of citizens to drive awareness around an issue, but the hiring party hides behind the scenes. In digital astroturfing, this is when the political party or special interest groups rallies others to create awareness in online channels while remaining behind the scenes with “plausible deniability.”

Cyber Provacateur: This can be a nasty thorn to a political party. Similar to the concept of agent provocateur in the real world, this type of agent urges hackers or a group of tech-savvy individuals to cause DoS (Denial of Service) or similar attacks against opponents websites or online properties. They may also foment highly aggressive activity online that is criminal in nature. Such actions are often used in nations such as Iran, Burma (Myanmar), and Ukraine etc.

Cyber Front Group: Similar to real-world front groups that act independent of the funding government, political party or agency. They are formally registered as a non-profit organization. In the US and Canada it may be a religious group or activist group that may or may not know who is providing them cash or resource support, yet they act aggressively on an issue. They target online properties (specifically in social media channels) to rally followers and create disinformation or similar.

Trolls: A well-known term. These we classify as individuals out to cause trouble because, well, they can. That’s their entertainment. They rarely if ever work for anyone but may easily become a sockpuppet without realizing it.

Cyber Quasi-State Organ (CQSO): Seen mostly in fragile, semi-democratic states where the government in power creates an arm of the government that is quasi-governmental. The aim is usually to expend a large amount of time creating pro-government content online, pushing down anti-government sentiment. Hugo Chavez has an arm of Chavistas that do this, Bashir in Sudan used an “army of bloggers” in 2011 and in Iran the Basij (a quasi-state organ) have been doing this since early 2010.

We expect such groups and tactics to grow in the coming years as Cyburbia plays an increasingly important role in the world of ideas and politics is nothing if not a lot of ideology! We have developed an algorithm that can “fingerprint” individuals who attempt to post as multiple people…not matter how much we try, a writing style is very much the same as our voice – unique. This is how we can assess our research into such uses by political groups and others.

The Social Media Challenges for Crisis Reporting

From the earthquake in Haiti, to Snowmageddon in Washington, DC and Japan’s earthquake and the riots in London; social media tools are increasingly playing a role during natural and man-made crises. From monitoring a situation and reporting through to organizing. There are major benefits, but increasingly there are growing challenges that solutions will need to overcome. From our research into how social medias are used before, during and after a crises, we’ve identified several issues;

1. Validity of Information: One of the biggest challenges is determining the accuracy and validity of information posted to public (open) tools such as Ushahidi and CrisisMappers. Anyone with a mobile phone or wireless device (i.e. iPad) can enter information. From where a house may have collapsed to where a store is being trashed. But what happens when someone in a fragile state reports a collapsed house with victims after an earthquake, but it isn’t true, they’re just looking for something they don’t really need. Recovery resources are assigned and where the help is really needed, victims may die. Or rioters mis-direct police to take attention away from what is really happening.

2. Identity & Reliability: Anyone who can access a publicly available reporting system can add information. But who are they? Where are they? Such anonymity can make it difficult to prosecute offenders later or gain valuable information from a witness. These too are critical issues.

3. From Data to Information to Intelligence: So much “data” is fed into the system or systems with the result of information overload. For a decision to be made, one must be able to extract intelligence from the information. No solution as yet addresses such an issue. The intelligence in the information comes from being able to validate sources, determine reliability of the information and accuracy of location and the event in question.

4. Too Many Systems No One Solution: Ushahidi is by far the best real-time reporting and monitoring tool for crises, but it isn’t the only one. Different aid agencies and governments may use other tools or citizens may create their own tool. As a result, there are multiple inputs that can lead to indecision or resource paralysis on the ground. In addition, no one solution pulls information in from all available sources; some use email and txt messaging over maps while others rely on txt messaging alone to populate a map and people not on the ground to clarify data on a map.

These are just four of the main issues we’ve identified with social media monitoring and reporting during a crises. They are not the fault of the people who’ve spent an enormous amount of time to build and populate; there is evidence that these tools can be vital. But challenges such as those above make it increasingly difficult for aid agencies and governments providing relief or the affected government, to use them in more than an anecdotal fashion. For security services and policing, they are even less reliable.

Addressing the challenges in identity and validity, technology may be able to help, but it will be sometime yet before that is a reality.

Social Media and Tourism

Our research into tourism and social media over the past two years has provided us, along with our clients, with some key insights into how tourists use social media. Among our key findings is that it is almost equal between males and females using social media to research destinations (52% female to 48% male) across the broad demographic range of 20-55+. When it comes to sharing photo’s and videos of their experiences however, that changes to 64% female and 36% male. This correlates to other consumer demographics where women are more likely to share experiences. When it comes to business travel however, men are 15% more likely to share their experiences from their travels.

Niche tourism markets are also very heavily engaged in social media for both planning trips, sharing experiences and recommending locations, things to do and where to stay. Tourism operators and authorities however, are seemingly still unsure about reaching out to niche markets online. Traditional marketing isn’t very cost effective for reaching niche markets for tourism, but online marketing, especially through social media, is. Niche markets are the most active in social media channels and can be effectively targeted and engaged.

In some of the projects we’ve worked on however, tourism authorities have focused on traditional mass markets and their engagement in social media. This would mean families, retirees or a broad demographic. They too are active in social media channels, but reaching them cost effectively either online or through traditional channels such as television, radio and print, is harder to do and remains more scattershot than targeted. Our research has shown that targeting tourist “segments” through social media, from niche markets to more defined segments (e.g. cruise lovers or value seekers) is a far more successful approach.

Through our work, we see we are at the forefront of this kind of tourism research into social media. And lets be clear, there is a definitive difference between monitoring your brand in social media and conducting social media research on tourism. Monitoring brings up conversations “now” and is limited in its ability to find true trends. Nor do any social media monitoring tools effectively (or to any degree) identify niche markets. Using social media monitoring tools is useful once you’ve done the initial research, engaged and have something to monitor. Using social media monitoring tools to research tourists use of social media will lead to disappointing results.

Tourism is a very hot topic across all social media channels and is one of the top three online topics of discussion and engagement. Tourism authorities and operators that research these opportunities and then engage may find significantly valuable new opportunities.

Forums Are Alive & Well Thank-You!

With all the cool new ways to connect with people and share online like Facebook, Google+, Twitter et al, you would think those clunky, earliest of social media tools, those horrid “forums” would be dead and gone to the digital graveyard. Well, not so much. In fact, they remain as popular as ever. And may perhaps be growing. But there is a demographic issue at play.

Online forums were the evolution of the early Bulletin Boards and W’ell (which still exists) out of San Francisco from the early 80′s, arguably the precursor to today’s current social media technologies/channels. They became very popular along with IRC (Internet Relay Chat) services in the mid-90′s. From about 1993 to 2002, forums became the backbone of early social medias. IRC’s were popular, but restrictive in that they were time sensitive and somewhat clunky. From IRC’s grew instant messaging tools such as ICQ (the first big one later supplanted by AOL IM) and Microsofts later MSN Messenger.

But where IM tools are far less popular today (mostly just with the under 20 demographic) and IRC services almost completely gone, forums have persisted and in fact, play a critical part of overall social media usage. In the over 200 research projects we’ve conducted for business and governments, forums have played a role in 97% of these projects and account for anywhere between 5% and 15% of the overall measurable content we analyse with our text analysis software, mediasphere360.

What we do note is that forums are mostly used by the +35 demographic, although we have seen a trend of use by the under 25 to 18 demographic for academic discussions and technical (engineers, ICT, cars.) When the service Ning first came out, we suspected it may edge out forums, since it enabled groups to come together far more easy and included the ability to share rich content like videos. A surfeit of Ning like contenders came out targeting everything from sports associations through to community clubs. Forums, however, refuse to die.

Forums are very popular with tourists and people researching tourist destinations, car and motorcycle mod clubs and all other kids of clubs and interests. One of the largest online forum communities (aside from tourism) is sewing – yes, sewing machines and darning needle types. Outside of North America and consumer engagement, we also see increasingly heavier use of forums by citizens in developing nations and their diaspora living in other countries. For developing nations with limited (read “expensive”) broadband access, forums are much easier for dial-up connections and use far less bandwidth.

We believe that forums will continue to play a key role in online engagement for at least the next ten years, if not longer. If you’re a marketer looking to engage in social media, don’t get confused just thinking Facebook or Twitter is the only place you need to be, it isn’t. If you’re relying on social media monitoring tools like Sysomos, Trackur or radian6 to point you to those conversations – don’t. They rarely “crawl” them and analysing text from them is almost impossible without some heavy lifting by human beings and some deny access to crawlers and must be searched/analysed manually.

Social Media & Corporate Due Diligence

Is there any real value to social media when it comes to corporate due diligence? There is indeed. In the due diligence process, sometimes vital information may be uncovered that could impact an investment transaction; good or bad. The key is to know what you’re looking for, how to ask the question and where to go looking. A Google search will tell you a lot. Perhaps. An online reputation management tool will tell you about the same, perhaps with some nicely designed graphs that, well, mean nothing.

Case Study Example
A client came to us that we had done market intelligence work for. This time, they were looking to invest in a software company in their sector. It was a strategic investment that would give them the software they needed and revenues from selling it to others. They were in the final stages of the due diligence process. So far, everything had checked out; the software was where is was supposed to be and the financials were as they should be. Since the investment included the key management of the company, they wanted to gain a better understanding of these people. That’s when it got interesting. The result of the research we did showed one of the co-founders was deeply engaged with a competitor and there was evidence of a side deal taking place – all of this from publicly available sources. But unless you know where to look and unless you have the ability to connect relationships in social media, this information may not have come to light until it was too late.

Social Media Research in Due Diligence
Just as social media can have an impact on board governance, so can it play a role in due diligence best practices. Arguably, a deep look into social media before the deep due diligence begins, may save an investor or buyer of a company a lot of up front time; and may give clear direction for due diligence. So what can social media potentially tell a VC, investor or buyer? Here’s a partial list;

- Reputation and standing of the founder(s) of the acquisition target

- Business and industry standing (to avoid potential damages)

- Other potential issues with Intellectual Property

- Prior business dealings that could send up red flags or indicate a good outcome

- Validate founder(s) claims of work and past experience

- Provide insight into what customers are saying in case there is cause for concern

Just as an individual can be vetted to ensure accuracy and reliability of claims, so can the company. And lets face it, people like to talk, always have, always will. This is a key underpinning of social technologies – that humans like to communicate. Often times, employees, customers or partners may say something in a blog post, on a public Facebook page, Twitter or other public spot. In and of itself, what is said is seemingly innocent at the time. Within that context, it is. Later on however or combined with additional information – that innocuous comment or blog post suddenly becomes very relevant and very important. Dots can be connected and a picture comes together. Competitors may use this information or investors. Either way, this is incredibly valuable information in the public domain.