October 14, 1999

Incognito Spinmeisters Battle Online Critics

When a Company's Product Is Under Fire, One Option Is to Plant a Defender in the Chat Room

By REBECCA FAIRLEY RANEY





Alan S. Weiner for The New York Times People in online discussions are often suspicious of company officers or consultants who join the debates. Jay Fenello, a consultant, regularly participates in such forums.

It would be fair to suspect, in a case like this, that the participant who raised the question that turned the criticism around worked for the company that made the speakers. In fact, a small industry is emerging among consultants who specialize in spinning online discussions to favor the positions of companies and interest groups.

Shabbir J. Safdar and his business partner, Jonah Seiger, regularly adopt pseudonyms and participate in online discussions on behalf of some clients. Their firm, Mindshare Internet Campaigns, in Washington, specializes in running the Internet side of advocacy campaigns. It offers the spin doctor service as part of the package.

Some firms, in keeping with a traditional practice in public relations, recruit scientists and other experts to voice clients' perspectives in online discussions. Matthew Benson, a senior director at the Washington public relations firm Bivings Woodell, and Ken Deutsch, vice president of Internet strategic communications at Issue Dynamics, a public affairs firm in Washington, have specialized for years in steering experts to online forums on behalf of clients.

Without question, these practices have made people taking part in online discussions suspicious. Questions about participants' identities and affiliations are becoming more common.



Consultants are infiltrating Web forums to influence consumers' debates.

In recent months, for example, online discussions about the registration of Internet domain names have been packed with revelations that some participants have received backing from companies affected by the issue.

Jay Fenello, who, until recently, was president of Iperdome, a domain name registration company in Atlanta, has weighed in regularly in 10 online discussion groups against the policies of the Government-backed group that is deciding the future of the registrations.

Until he closed the company in September to become a full-time consultant, he usually signed his messages by identifying himself as president of Iperdome.

But his opponents recently posted messages saying that Fenello has also been working as a consultant for Network Solutions, the company whose monopoly on domain name registrations is being dismantled. In response, he acknowledged the tie but played down its importance, saying his opponents were using it just to discredit him.

"It's something that I freely admitted," Fenello said. "It's just like Presidential politics. When something can be used as a weapon, it is.

"I challenge anybody to detect any changes in my statements when I was working with Network Solutions and when I was not. Everybody in this debate is somehow funded by somebody."

Whether companies' efforts to sway opinions on the Internet, surreptitiously or openly, ultimately improves the quality of online discourse or damages its credibility is debatable. Some argue that the practice of spinning discussions is less chilling than it is for companies to sue their online critics -- just as lawsuits once became a tame alternative to dueling.

Not that companies have stopped turning to the courts.

David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit research group, said the center had identified 20 cases in recent months in which companies had filed defamation suits against online critics.

"It wouldn't surprise people who frequent these discussion groups to know that there are people being paid to say good things about a company," Sobel said. "That tradition comes with the territory of the Internet. What traditionally hasn't come with the territory is getting hauled into court." When compared to litigation, Sobel said, even using deception to try to turn around criticism online is "a better approach."





Jeff Topping for The New York Times Steve Mihaylo, chief executive of Inter-Tel, calmed a recent heated Internet discussion of his company.

Because participants in Internet forums are becoming more suspicious, they are quick to challenge anyone who seems to be hiding an affiliation.

In August, for example, people participating in a discussion of broadband Internet access started questioning Audrie Krause about her ties to AT&T, a major company concerned with the issue. Ms. Krause, a consultant in San Francisco, had presented herself in such discussions as a consumer advocate and argued against Government regulation.

In a telephone interview, Ms. Krause said she did "Internet outreach" for a political consulting firm whose client is AT&T, but that the work "really isn't relevant to the position I'm taking."

"The work that I'm doing that's funded by specific interests is very aboveboard," she said.

Her opponents argue otherwise. Jamie Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, a nonprofit group, said forum participants were uncomfortable with Ms. Krause's ties.

"She always stands up and says, 'As a consumer advocate, this is the position I take,' " Love said. "You should say, 'As a lobbyist for AT&T, this is where I come out on it.' "

Tora Bikson, a senior scientist at the Rand Corporation who has studied online discourse, compared the practice of influencing online discussions with "pump priming" in public meetings, in which politicians plant supporters in the audience to ask friendly questions.

The practice on the Internet is "more distressing," she contended, because people in the audience may expect questions to be planted in public meetings but may not be aware that perspectives are being planted in online settings.

"If you don't know there are ringers and spin doctors," Dr. Bikson said, "that immediately damages the credibility of the forum. People could end up damaging the medium because everybody does want it to be this open medium."

On its face, the fear of the power of online critics may appear to be unjustified. online discussion lists and forums tend to reach only several hundred people at most.

But opinions formed in even the most obscure electronic byways can reach the mainstream quickly.

Consultants who monitor forums for companies consider online discussions to be an early warning system for consumer complaints and public perceptions. At best, the consultants can strangle misinformation in the electronic cradle.

"If participated in properly," said Benson, at Bivings Woodell, "these can be vehicles for shaping emerging issues."

He and other consultants approach online forums cautiously.

When deciding whether to intervene in a discussion, Benson said, they weigh a number of factors: How serious a forum is it? Do influential people frequent the discussion? How much reach does the forum have outside its own boundaries? Are the critics considered influential by the group, or are they merely considered annoying?

The hardest part of the job, many consultants say, is to encourage companies to use restraint in their responses.

"You see a lot of companies overreacting," said Deutsch, at Issue Dynamics. "They don't realize that not everyone is influential. They want to fight out every opponent on every discussion list they see."

The easiest situation to handle is when critics of a company are posting blatantly inaccurate information. In those cases, consultants encourage representatives of the companies to respond openly and set the record straight.

That strategy worked well earlier this year for Steve Mihaylo, chief executive of Inter-Tel, a digital communications company based in Phoenix. On a Yahoo message board read by many of the company's large shareholders, critics were ripping into the company's employees and marketing practices. When the criticism of individuals became too personal, Mihaylo stepped up to defend them.

In his first posting, he wrote, "There is so much misinformation and just plain bad manners on this message board that I thought this might be a refreshing way to bring some objectivity to this process."

The tone on the message board changed immediately.

All the participants started addressing the chief executive of the company that they had just been trashing as Mihaylo. The virulence of their questions diminished.

But consultants warn that in some cases, a company only fans the hostility by issuing a statement openly.

In cases like that, consultants may enter the discussion using false identities or by misrepresenting their interests.

But the tactic is risky -- so risky that some firms stick to recruiting outside parties like scientists or other advocates for a company's position to get involved without disclosing the company's role.

The potential for trouble is why Safdar, of Mindshare Internet Campaigns, recommends a light touch for companies when they intercede in online discussions.

"If you walk into a discussion that is ripe to go a certain direction and you ask a question and the crowd is ripe to go that direction, that's all you have to do," he said. "You say, 'If they were evil, would they do this?' "

But to gauge a group's dynamics requires long-term monitoring. Bivings Woodell, for example, employs a division of four or five people dedicated to monitoring.

"You have to sit somebody in front of the computer," Safdar said, "and they have to develop a cultural memory for the issues they're following."

Such labor-intensive work can command large fees. Safdar said he had heard of companies running up bills of hundreds of thousands of dollars for a year's monitoring and intervention.

"I've seen some big price tags," he said. "I've seen clients who were very, very worried and would plunk down large sums of money."

Consultants describe the subterfuge as a way to balance discussions and defend the truth in a medium where facts can prevail. Within that framework, they argue, the practice is healthier for Internet discussion than a rash of lawsuits.

"A lot of them want to sue," Deutsch said of clients who approach his firm. "It's a whole new ball game, and you can't operate that way anymore. How a company treats organizations and individuals on the Internet will affect how the public will perceive the company."

Rebecca Fairley Raney at rfr@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.