The initiative is called “spread the word.” This is crowd-sourced astroturfing with material incentives. They are giving people stuff in exchange for the legitimacy that supposedly comes with online identity—specifically, their status as not part of the campaign. Obviously, McCain’s official shills can’t go around doing this: that wouldn’t be the awesome internet public sphere. But masses of typical comment spamming jerks represent the voice of the people! A voice that’s bribed by a political interest to parrot it’s propoganda.
What do we think about this? What are the implications for the “how do political campaigns feel about bloggers” question?
