AZspot AZspot

blue bits. red rocks.
Sunday 29 March 2009

Many of these governments have honed their Internet strategies beyond censorship and are employing more subtle (and harder to detect) ways of controlling dissent, often by planting their own messages on the Web and presenting them as independent opinion. Their actions are often informed by the art of online *astroturfing*, a technique also popular with modern corporations and PR firms. While companies use it to engineer buzz around products and events, governments are using it to create the appearance of broad popular support for their ideology. Their ultimate ambition may be to transform the Internet into a *spinternet*, the vast and mostly anonymous areas of cyberspace under indirect government jurisdiction. The spinternet strategy could be more effective than censorship while there are a plenty of ways to access blocked Web sites, we do not yet have the means to distinguish spin from independent comment. Evgeny Morozov

A GNT creation ©2007–2011