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.
**********
From
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.
