Turkish Government Aims To Create 6000-Strong Social Media Propaganda Squad
from the getting-the-message-out dept
In the recent demonstrations in Istanbul, the Turkish government may have had superior police and security forces on the streets, but one area where it lost the battle was on social networks, which anti-government protesters used adroitly to get their viewpoint out to the world. It seems the Turkish government has learned its lesson, and has decided to fight back according to this report in the Wall Street Journal:
The Justice and Development Party [AKP], led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is recruiting a 6,000-member social-media team to woo citizens and fight critics, party officials said.
The Turkish government certainly isn't the first to adopt this form of digital propaganda. China led the way with its "50-cent party", named for the amount of money that its members are allegedly paid every time they steer discussion back towards the official line. More recently, it has emerged that Israel will be paying university students to post pro-government messages online, but without identifying themselves as part of a propaganda team. Given the importance of social networks, and their ability to help shape political debates, it seems likely that this tactic will become increasingly common around the world.
The AKP is gradually bringing young, tech-savvy party members to Ankara to train them in classrooms to act as volunteer "social-media representatives."
The youth will be charged with sharing news and images, mainly on Twitter and Facebook, but also on Instagram and YouTube, that promote the party perspective and monitor online discussions, a party official said.
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Filed Under: propaganda, social media, turkey
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If you have to pay people to say nice things about you...
Just a thought, but if the various countries don't want their citizens to keep posting such mean, not nice at all things about them, maybe, I dunno, stop doing crap that makes people hate and/or distrust them?
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Yes Erdogan is extremely divisive, but the opposition is a mess of Khmers and communists. The Kurds would hate their return to power with a passion.
In the cities Erdogan is hated, in most of the rural areas he is loved. Ultimately this is about swinging some young peoples opinions to better smear the significant protests. Protests reflect bad on a ruler so they put them down with any measure they can get away with. Roughing up protesters doesn't resonate well with EU or the turkish people who get news from outside their media. Roughing up opponents online is everyday life.
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We do this here too.
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For those of you that didn't know, this is exactly the kind of messages you need to look out for. Shills aren't stupid, no matter what they make you think.
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We love you.
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all governments want to be able to stay in power. doing this sort of thing is then going to be used as a way of silencing even political opposition. in other words, we will soon have a world that is run as a dictator runs a country. remember that the entertainment industries are doing the same thing in kids classrooms. trying to influence how they think and act when they grow up by instilling into them a certain philosophy while they are young
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Trend setter
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