I read this document, not satisfied by the summary provided in the Wired story linked to below. I provide here the passages that I found most revealing or informative.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/03/report-recru...
This paper explores the possibility of incorporating blogs and blogging into military information strategy, primarily as a tool for influence. Towards that end, we examine the value of blogs as targets of and/or platforms for military influence operations and supporting intelligence operations. Influence operations are a subset of information operations (IO) that includes the core capabilities of Psychological Operations (PSYOP) and Military Deception (MILDEC), and the related capabilities of Public Affairs (PA), Military Support to Public Diplomacy (PD) and Civil Affairs/Civil-Military Operations (CA/CMO).
The implications of the entrenched inequality of the blogosphere for influence operations are threefold. - First, other things being equal, the blogs that are linked to the most often are likely to be among the most infl uential. - Second, the vast majority of blogs can be ignored, concentrat- ing efforts on the most popular blogs. - Third, bringing a new blog into prominence is likely to be slow and diffi cult. It is not, however, impossible.
Nearly 75 percent of Americans use the Internet regularly, and those who use it most regularly tend to be young, male, have some degree of college educa- tion and generally are in or from the middle to upper-middle income brackets. These are the people who tend to be the most politically active, as well. Blog creators follow this trend, being generally young, affluent, educated males with broadband access and at least six years’ experience online.
In general, a blogger’s objectives; qualifications and life experiences; skills at writing, framing arguments and making use of the Web page medium; personal attributes such as integrity; net- works of personal contacts; and levels of interaction with the audi- ence all contribute to the audience’s assessment of the merit and credibility of his or her blog.
Even if there is no widespread preconception about U.S. use of propaganda, it may be easy for for- eign audiences to dismiss the U.S. perspective with “Yes, but you aren’t one of us, you don’t really understand us.†In this regard, information strate- gists can consider clandestinely recruit- ing or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence already within the target nation, group, or community to pass the U.S. message.
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.40 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
An alternative strategy is to “make†a blog and blogger. The pro- cess 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.
There are certain to be cases where some blog, outside the con- trol of the U.S. government, promotes a message that is antithetical to U.S. interests, or actively supports the informational, recruiting and logistical activities of our enemies. The initial reaction may be to take down the site, but this is problematic in that doing so does not guarantee that the site will remain down.
Hack- ing the site and subtly changing the messages and data—merely a few words or phrases—may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility with the audience. Better yet, if the blogger happens to be passing enemy communications and logistics data, the information content could be corrupted. If the messages are subtly tweaked and the data corrupted in the right way, the enemy may reason that the blogger in question has betrayed them and either take down the site (and the blogger) themselves, or by threatening such action, give the U.S. an opportunity to offer the individual amnesty in exchange for information.
There will also be times when it is thought to be necessary, in the context of an integrated information campaign, to pass false or erroneous information through the media, on all three layers, in sup- port of military deception activities. Given the watchdog functions that many in the blogging community have assumed—not just in the U.S., but also around the world—doing so jeopardizes the entire U.S. information effort. Credibility is the heart and soul of influ- ence operations. In these cases, extra care must be taken to ensure plausible deniability and nonattribution, as well as employing a well- thought-out deception operation that minimizes the risks of expo- sure. Because of the potential blowback effect, information strategy should avoid planting false information as much as possible.
Analysts working with blog intelligence must have access to the operational disciplines that they support; the closer the better. We recommend the creation of small special operations units with oper- ational authority and integrated intelligence collections and analysis to conduct blog-based operations.
In order to act and react efficiently in managing bloggers and blogs, the intelligence specialists and planners who have the knowl- edge should be the ones running the actual blog. Or, in cases where indigenous bloggers and their blogs have been identified and recruited, the blog operations cell should also house the case officer managing the asset, having done the work to cultivate and recruit him or her.