Bill, del Consejo de Investigación Nacional de Canadá, envía un enlace a este artículo de Wired en el que se cita el estudio “Blogs and Military Information Strategy” escrito por James Kinniburgh y Dororthy Denning (sí, la misma que cuando era Directora del Departamento de Informática de la Universidad de Georgetown apoyaba al “Clipper Chip”) para la Joint Special Operations University (militares de EEUU) en 2006. Dicho estudio analiza el fenómeno blogger y el ejército (debate que trae cola: si son una pérdida de tiempo, un riesgo… o un arma).

Citas del artículo (ustedes saquen la conclusión que quieran sobre la manipulación institucionalizada):

Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence… to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering. On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.

An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. Still, there are people in the military today who like to blog. In some cases, their talents might be redirected toward operating blogs as part of an information campaign. If a military blog offers valuable information that is not available from other sources, it could rise in rank fairly rapidly.