Online propaganda the corporate way

'Don't believe everything you read in the papers.' This reality check referring to the primary information vehicle of the 19th century could well have been written specifically for the 21st century information medium of the internet.

Take this story that was published in The Guardian earlier this year, for example.

The paper's French correspondent in Paris wrote a piece about a book by a respected French science writer which claimed that NASA had conducted experiments relating to sex in space. The purpose was to discover possible sexual positions in a weightless environment.

Despite the obvious questions as to the scientific point of all this, NASA was said to have tested 20 sexual positions and found that most, including the missionary position, were impossible to carry out without using accessories such as an elastic belt.

Unfortunately for both the writer and The Guardian, however, the secret source of this story, a NASA document, was declared bogus by the Urban Legends section of About.com. So which is right? - you pays your money and you takes your choice.

But whereas The Guardian may have been guilty of simply perpetuating an amusing hoax, other forms of online disinformation are less benign. Users are increasingly being presented with information on the web that is inflected, touched-up and spun in a sophisticated and creative fashion.

The good old days
The heady days of 1994 and 1995, when information was posted and exchanged online by enthusiasts, have gone due to the commercialisation of the internet. Such a move was inevitable and has had its benefits. Commercial competition has resulted, for example, in some internet service providers (ISPs) offering free access to users.

But we also have to pay a price for this. From the moment we go to a portal or search engine, we are pushed in certain directions. News and other information is filtered by the provider, and search engines rank the answers to queries. In principle at least, search engine providers could charge advertisers to give information related to their products or services a high ranking.

In a paper on corporate manipulation of the web, Bryan Pfaffenberger, associate professor of technology, culture and communication at the University of Virginia, argues that corporations are manipulating the technology behind the internet to ensure that users go to certain sites by default.

For example, he claims that pressure is being put on "internet designers to build bandwidth reservation schemes and quality of service guarantees that will funnel users to a few high performance sites. If you don't want to visit the sites that have paid for quality of service guarantees that's fine, but you might have to wait quite a while to get through."

And as a group, web users aren't exactly renowned for their patience.

Corporate warfare
But corporations are also starting to use the internet as a weapon against their rivals and perceived enemies.

US company Net Zero, for example, offers free internet access to users. On the other hand, it also offers its advertisers such services as the 'Ad Missile', which enables them to immediately target subscribers who visit competitors' websites.

But there are other less insidious forms of information manipulation. Ilana Cravitz, a spokeswoman for the human rights organisation Article 19, said: "One of the things you find is that large companies who are getting a lot of flak online from green organisations and organised labour, may ring the internet service provider and say: 'Take that site down. It's defamatory and we are going to sue if you don't.'"

"There have been a number of responses to that kind of intimidation, ranging from ISPs taking stuff down, to people mirroring the site all over the world. But you tend not to hear from the company again because their action has been counterproductive," she added.

And this situation is becoming more prevalent as the internet matures and corporations become increasingly proactive in protecting their brand names online.

Paul Vlissidis, head of risk at NCC Group, said: "Corporations are becoming more aware of the importance of their image on the internet and the fragility of it as well. It's very easy to damage someone's internet reputation. The Amazon incident, where someone tweaked all the book summaries and put up obscene comments, does damage to an organisation's reputation. Every time someone tells a story, another chip gets taken out of it."

He also cited the situation at Norwich Union, where an internal email that claimed a competitor was in financial trouble was leaked and resulted in a lawsuit. Significant damages were awarded against the company.

Online protests
Vlissidis also believes that personal websites could potentially be used for propaganda purposes and even industrial espionage. "What I think is becoming prevalent is people using their personal websites as a form of protest for poor customer service that they've had. That could easily be exploited by someone who might be an employee of a competitor, or a friend of an employee of a competitor," he explained.

"Most companies are so worried about customer care that they might not investigate it as closely as they otherwise would. I wouldn't be surprised if something like that has already gone on," he added.

Vlissidis also cites the example of Safeway's online shopping site being hacked into to obtain customer lists, and shoppers then being emailed to tell them to buy elsewhere. The message appeared to have been issued by the supermarket.

It is possible to imagine protagonists in a William Gibson or Bruce Stirling novel hiring such hackers to throw a spanner in the works of competitors' smooth running corporate machines as a means of corporate warfare.

"Yeah, I think unscrupulous organisations could easily do that," said Vlissidis. "And who's to say they are not doing it right now. If such a thing did exist it would probably exist in the hi-tech industry rather than any other industry. We can speculate, but until there is a documented incident, who is to know?"