PSA: How to identify paid shills and propagandists

Sometimes it's easy.

Very often in the news media, political operatives are placed on discussion panels as "political analysts". An example would be the use of Karl Rove as an analyst on FOX"news". While Karl has attended six colleges in his life, he never got a degree. Lacking the education to form a truly objective educated analysis based on political science or political history; the primary analysis that Karl can provide is that of a political operative. Obviously, Mr. Rove is getting paid to present persuasive rhetoric and not subjective analysis.

Author's note: I was hoping to use Daily Kos founder, Markos Moulitsas or Howard Dean as an example from the left; but unfortunately for this piece, they both have degrees in political science.

Sometimes it's not so easy.

Professional PR firms pay people (sometimes per post, sometimes per hour) to post preselected talking points or to promote a candidate or agenda in blogs and message boards. Topics like global warming, cap and trade, and health care reform are big getters. Whisper campaigns regarding candidates are also common. Obama being a Muslim or an Arab was a recent one.

The focus isn't always political in nature. These same firms hire people to promote products and give positive (or negative) reviews on Amazon.com.

An example of these firms was Chip Griffin's "NetVocates". Griffin worked for a variety of politicians, think tanks, and public relations firms in the Washington, D.C. area. In addition, he headed townhall.com, a conservative internet portal. You can read more about them here.

http://www.cybersoc.com/2006/05/behind_n...

Advantage Consultants, whose image I used to head this entry, is another example. http://economistsview.typepad.com/econom...

Essentially, it's astroturfing in electronic media.

How can they be identified?

In my experience I've noticed several common denominators with paid shills:

1. Constant repetition of the exact same talking points.

Sometimes this is done because the paid shill is unfamiliar with the topic of discussion. Other times it's a result of getting paid per posting of a certain talking point. An example follows:

Person A: Nowhere in this 2,500+ page bill does it show how it'll make my breath fresher!

Person B: Here's a peer reviewed study of how it will make your breath fresher

Person A: That's opinion! Nowhere in this 2,500+ page bill does it show it'll make my breath fresher!

Person B: Here's testimony from 4 out of five dentists who conclude it will make your breath fresher

Person A: That's opinion! Nowhere in this 2,500+ page bill does it show it'll make my breath fresher!

Person B: Here's a stone tablet given to me from God himself, stating that this bill will make your breath fresher

Person A: God has an omnipotency bias! Nowhere in this 2,500+ page bill does it show it'll make my breath fresher!

Person A has now racked up a whopping 42 cents for each utterance of his talking point.

2. Obligatory "I'm not a member of either party". This one is a favorite. It gives the impression that the speaker is an enlightened free-thinker. Another version of this is to claim to be a former member of a party or ideology. As if to imply that the speaker has "seen the light".

This one usually starts with something like this:

" I am no longer a member of either of these 'for themselves' parties. I say throw all of them out. I am and plan to continue to work to throw the lot of them out of office. A POX on both their houses!

Yet they always seem to end up saying things like this:

I so get why you are a liberal.

Boy, if this were the Republicans there would be a mass media up roar to investigate all this corruption in government. Because its Democrats....crickets.

Get out the plastic and give to the campaign of Republican X. He needs to win by at least two point to counter act the mass cheating that will take place in any Democrat controlled election.

It has been reported by the Democrat Senator from Louisiana that her state is getting a $300 million "gift", read bribe, for her vote.

Or the "gift", read bribe, to the taxpayers of Nebraska for that Democrat Senator's vote

Those last two reflections are the most amusing, as the speaker is unable to differentiate typical political horse-trading and a legislator illegally accepting money into their own pockets.

3. He'll do anything to keep the conversation going. Like a zombie who packed a knife for an intellectual gunfight, the paid shill gets blown away after every post but refuses to die. The anonymity of the internet, coupled with financial incentive, rids the shill of any sense of dignity or integrity. If the shill's arguments are going badly, often they will attempt to derail the conversation to a topic they feel more comfortable with or have a new set of talking points for.

4. Obligatory mentioning of duty in armed services. This one is fairly common. It serves to put the speaker in a revered position, implying a superior level of patriotism. It also sets the ground work for accusations of not respecting our service members, should a straw man argument become necessary.

5. Complete disregard for facts that disprove his rhetoric. This is the big kahuna of paid shills. Without conversation there is no pay. Thus, as noted in point 3, a shill will do anything possible to keep the conversation going long after it should have ended. Very often confirmation bias is employed. This type of cognitive bias is the tendency to interpret new information in such a way that confirms one's prior beliefs, even to the extreme of denial, ignoring information that conflicts with one's prior beliefs.

Some do it for free

This isn't to say that everyone who displays these characteristics is getting paid. Some people who are the victims of paid shills become what is commonly called a "wing nut". A wing nut is a person who holds on so tightly to what they want to believe that they are no longer able to accept evidence that they could be misinformed or mislead. Typically, they become hostile when someone tries to help them understand the facts behind their misunderstanding. Thus, the person telling them the truth becomes the enemy and the person lying to them is the trusted source.

Typically these people have no working knowledge of the topics that they feel so strongly about and instead have all of their opinions formed by the persuasive media that they consume. This can also result in what is called the Dunning--Kruger effect.

The Dunning--Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it". The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than actuality. Essentially, a sufferer of the Dunning--Kruger effect is a person who knows the least of a subject, but considers themselves an expert due to their fill of propaganda.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%...

Paid Shills and Wingnuts both rely heavily on logical and rhetorical fallacies in their discussion. Below are the top 10 fallacies of all time:

argumentum ad hominem is an argument which links the validity of a premise to an irrelevant characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.

"You'll see what Liberalism will bring"

A straw man argument is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position.

"You think this so called health care bill is a God sent."

Argument from outrage argues against something without offering arguments besides saying that the thing would be unacceptable, or damaging, or "wrong", and so on.

"It's sad to watch my country commit suicide."

An appeal to fear is a fallacy in which a person attempts to create support for his or her idea by using deception and propaganda in attempts to increase fear and prejudice toward a competitor.

If you want to see grandma's fate decided by a death panel..."

Hasty Generalization: is a logical fallacy of faulty generalization by reaching an inductive generalization based on insufficient evidence. It commonly involves basing a broad conclusion upon the statistics of a single instance or a small sampling that fails to sufficiently represent the entire topic.

"Nothing in government is without error or bias. Here's an example: I have a Marine Corps friend..."

Group think occurs as a person lets identification with a group cloud their reasoning and deliberations when reaching a position on a given issue.

"That website claims to represent my political values. Therefore I agree with anything said by anyone on that web site"

A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic.

"Think of Detroit as the American health care system"

wishful thinking is commonly held to be a specific logical fallacy in an argument when it is assumed that because we wish something to be true or false that it is actually true or false.

"I do NOT deny the existence of objective data, but I do deny that in a political debate it can ever exist."

Argument from Popularity is an informal logical fallacy where an individual claims that a proposition is true because it is or has been widely believed.

Everyone knows Obama is an Arab! I have 100 emails saying so!"

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) which states, "Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one."

"We lost 1,000 jobs the month after this bill was passed. Therefore, this bill cost us 1,000 jobs."

This ends the "how to identify a shill" public service announcement.