Cash for anti- ADMK blogs, DMK lures bloggers.

A few days after the drama of Vaiko accusing and then apologizing to Karunanidhi for indulging in the world’s oldest profession, here comes the news about the latest digital way in which DMK tries to rope in bloggers into that oldest profession!

The offer is to pay 100 rupees for a blog that will be supplied to the blogger every day. There will be 3 such blogs which will contain anti ADMK material that the blogger has to copy and post it in his blog as his own idea. The material may not be a direct attack on the ADMK but a clever play of words with facts and figures so that the readers may not suspect the blogger as a handle of DMK.  The money is more if the blogger introduces other bloggers to carry out this oldest profession in digital world. 

This job is done for the DMK by a Mumbai based Brand consultant.  Mail transaction of this kind of digital prostitution is reproduced here.

(click the image to enlarge)

The conversation between the reporter of The New Indian Express (who exposed this) and the employee of the agency who work for the DMK can be heard here:

This kind of campaign had already taken off in the social media. The twisted news on Chennai floods was first posted by a DMK man whose father worked as a lawyer to Karunanidhi. His vicious post was quoted by the Tamil daily Dinamalar the next day and passed off as a news item saying that the flood was caused by the delay in opening the flood gates as the flood gate operators waited for Jayalalithaa’s ‘orders’! Times of India produced an article on the same lines quoting him and another unknown writer who wrote from her desk top and not from the ground. This idea went round and round until the facts were exposed by another blogger (Read here).  

This kind of false propaganda on social media platform done by one’s own volition or as party organs is acceptable as free speech. But engaging an agency to hire bloggers to post the propaganda material to reach to the unsuspecting readers who would be thinking that it is their favourite blogger’s own idea is nothing but making the bloggers indulge in digital prostitution.  

By now many DMK affiliated bloggers were into this propaganda - whether paid or not is beyond doubt after knowing about this agency. This information itself is enough to vote out DMK. DMK and Karunanidhi had always been in the forefront in corrupt practices and mischief. When they got a chance to enter the cabinet in Delhi, they spread their practices there too. They have not left out the social media now.

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From

http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/tamil_nadu/Paid-News-Passe-its-Now-Paid-Views/2016/04/08/article3368981.ece

Paid News Passe, it's Now Paid Views

By 

S Deepak Karthik

“Here is an opportunity for getting paid for your blog. All you need is to copy paste the content and get paid weekly. This is a political campaign we are running where we provide facts and figures that features the existing government in Tamil Nadu.”

With the election campaign increasingly moving online to match the age of technology where a quarter of the electorate is under 30, can the dirty tricks experts be far behind? A Mumbai-based brand consultancy firm has entered the murky waters ahead of the Assembly poll in Tamil Nadu in search of digital daily-wagers who can take on the incumbent government by ‘playing around with facts and figures’.

On Wednesday, a group of about 100 bloggers, who are part of a Chennai-based online blogging community, received a group mail from Brand Monachis, a Mumbai-based company that has worked with national and regional political parties, with the subject, ‘Get paid for your blog’.

The deal was rather simple:

every morning, it will provide the content which the blogger has to post on their blog, without making any changes, and share on the social media space. “You just have to copy and paste the content we send you. In return, we will pay you about Rs 300 per day at the rate of Rs 100 per article that we provide along with data against the existing State government,” a representative of the firm told this reporter on phone after responding to the initial mail. The wages will be paid weekly, with a blogger willing to do the job standing to earn Rs 2,100 a week, it added.

The campaign was run for the DMK against the incumbent government, the person added, though Express could not independently verify the identity of the client.

The person at the other end of the line gave two contact numbers if interested in taking up the job — it included one that is the number for the Mumbai firm as given in its official webpage. When called the number feigning interest, the offer became sweeter: bring in 10 more who would be willing to do this and become a coordinator for the group. In return, this reporter was offered double the money for each post — Rs 200 per post.

Such efforts to enlist bloggers are not unusual. Firms spend money to build presence and promote brands online through bloggers who have a substantial number of captive audience and are able to mould opinion thro-ugh informal channels. But doing it for political parties is unusual, at least in Tamil Nadu. The bloggers in TN, who received the invite, said popular ones among them were earlier approached by another party strongly associated with an influential community in northern TN for a similar campaign where they would give the content to be posted on their blog space. 

“Bloggers would prefer to express their own opinions instead of being forced to reproduce the content generated by some PR agency for promoting a particular political party. We can’t do injustice to our readers,” N Katie, a noted blogger from Chennai, told Express.

“I can immediately relate this as a digital equivalent of paying voters to vote. Such initiatives will backfire since it affects the credibility of bloggers who post such pre-prepared articles on their blogs,” said Kiruba Shankar, a social media entrepreneur.

While repeated attempts to reach the leaders of DMK, for whom the campaign is allegedly being run, failed, Chief Electoral Officer Rajesh Lakhani said, “We will take action as per MCC and IPC against any violation.”

“Bloggers would prefer to express their own opinions instead of being forced to reproduce the content generated by some PR agency for promoting a particular political party. We can’t do injustice to our readers,” N Katie, a noted blogger from Chennai, told Express.