Global Voices reports on the only way Vladimir Putin can win friends and influence people (other than crude violence). Note the false analogy to the U.S. — there is no evidence of the American police forces paying bloggers to paper over their human-rights abuses for cash, and if there were it would be a gigantic international scandal. Procter & Gamble paying a consumer blogger to say he likes Head & Shoulders is hardly the same as the Russian state paying a political blogger to say the police don’t crack skulls.
Recently, Roman Dobrokhotov, a Russian blogger and political activist (who was interviewed by GV [EN] last year), has conducted an investigation [RUS] on how paid blogger networks function in the Russian blogosphere. He wrote that different representatives of the paid blogger network had contacted him three times, offering from $23 to $50 per post. Every blogger who agrees to provide content for a fee is supposed to choose a unique angle when writing about a certain topic. The latest offer that Dobrokhotov received was quite unusual: to write positive comments about the Russian police:
A manager of the company Garin-studio offered me to post a whole series of posts with some positive content about the police. For the first post – 2,000 rubles ($63), all others – 1,000 rubles each ($31). I’ve managed to unearth more detailed information. It turned out that the client of the company is the federal Ministry of the Interior, not the Moscow Police Department; what is even more interesting, the order was from the Department of Internal Security [which is supposed to control and monitor the police itself] (aha, so that’s what they do!). There are 50 bloggers involved in this project, though with some of them, with the most popular (for example, with Radulova), the client is in direct contact. Garin-studio, as far as I understood, isn’t the only contractor used by [the Ministry of the Interior].
Other bloggers spotted [RUS] some nearly simultaneous posts with positive comments about the police at Natalia Radulova’s blog [RUS] and at another popular blog by Maxim Aleksandrov [RUS].
Dobrokhotov has counted at least 38 bloggers who allegedly have contracts with Garin-studio and are involved in the “police campaign,” some top-ranking bloggers among them. He has analysed how many popular bloggers wrote about the same things at the same time: some 75 bloggers have posted similar posts about mobile applications within one week (including such Top-25 bloggers as ibigdan, katoga, allan999, bydyry and sviridenkov); 17 bloggers or so have posted about weight loss medications.
Generally speaking, paid bloggers are a global phenomenon. In the United States in 2009, approximately 8.5 percent of all the bloggers were paid for what they wrote [EN]. As the line between blogging and journalism becomes blurred, the former stops being just a hobby and turns into a profession. David Armano explains the process of placing paid content in the mainstream and social media [EN]:
The business of buying media has been around as long as marketing and in the digital space, while it may be measured differently, the principles are similar. You determine where you’ll get the most bang for your buck and purchase media placements in digital environments that are deemed appropriate. In many cases, agencies are used to broker the deals. The latest wrinkle to this model is to partner with specialized firms who deal in niche media such as communities, networks, forums and blogs. These firms will take payment and make arrangements for your communications to exist in these alternative areas. While as an advertiser you may not have control over the communications (for example, bloggers in this model still say what they want) but the “placement” remains paid for or purchased.
In Russia, too, there are vast networks of paid bloggers, who, until recently, hadn’t been exposed. There are blog “markets” (like blogun.ru), where media-planners can order a post or a link concerning a certain topic or product. Usually it works like this: sometimes bloggers produce and are paid for content (e.g., tutorials, thematic materials on a certain subject), and sometimes they are paid to promote selected products (i.e., for subtle advertising). A lighter version of the “paid media” is “compensated media”: a blogger writes about some gadget he/she received as a gift or an event he/she got invited to. Many people would trust certain bloggers more than they would trust newspaper articles or TV commercials – the way they’d trust someone they know in person, a friend. This is part of what makes blogs such an attractive venue for those who are willing to promote a product or an event.
The idea of a paid blog is that it uses this private channel of communication and gets more efficient in promoting certain things or ideas. Of course, there’s always a moral dilemma: if a blog is supposed to provide personal information and is intended to offer “real communication,” hidden advertisement “violates” the unspoken contract between the blogger and his/her readers, which is based on mutual respect and sincerity.
There are certain peculiarities about the Russian blogosphere. First of all, since the majority of most popular Russian blogs are hosted by LiveJournal, hidden advertisement is actually illegal. LJ’s Terms of Service clearly restrict unsolicited or unauthorized advertisement (Article 7 of Member Conduct part says: “You agree to NOT use the Service to: … Upload, post or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, ‘junk mail,’ ‘spam,’ ‘chain letters,’ ‘pyramid schemes,’ or any other form of solicitation.”). This rule is widely ignored. Only one popular blogger, LJ user tema, tried to promote [RUS] authorised LiveJournal ads, but his initiatives never really found support among other popular bloggers.
What is even more important – and Dobrokhotov’s case described above illustrates it vividly – is that the networks of paid bloggers sometimes turn to advocating certain political views or to promoting the official political agenda. The blogger’s investigation brings more transparency to this “grey zone” of RuNet. Exposed paid bloggers are less influential, since readers understand that they advocate certain points of view because they’re paid to do that. Another thing is that Dobrokhotov has uncovered one of the practices that the Ministry of the Interior conducts online to influence the Russian public opinion, thus raising an important issue: is it appropriate for a government institution to be using controversial marketing methods?
La Russophobe 
Putin’s governmental apparatus also is interferring more and more, with his critics on the internet, through LiveJournal, and it’s anti-spam protections, such as ‘Re-captcha’. Thus, they make it impossible to post anti-Putin comments on Russian-LiveJournal sites. Such remarks or comments are seen by the automated system, as ‘spam’, apparently. LJ seems to be complicite in this. Key words, as ‘KGB’, trigger this. I am facing this right now, as are other anti-Putin internet users, and LJ cannot be innocent in this, cannot! They have been bought out, so don’t trust them anymore, you who do trust them.
I prefer the austere insomniac blog, he is sincere there, also blogs on Echo of Moscow radiostation with Youlia Latunina and many others. We can be sure that when we only hear things presented from one angle, something must smell fishy there, like this blog for example, oh the irony… :)
LA RUSSOPHOBE RESPONDS:
So you think Medvedev’s blog is fishy, right? And the Kremlin’s website?
If you think this blog has only one angle, you are simply not reading it. Even if we did, this post has nothing to do with that. It has to do with BEING BRIBED you ignoramus. Why are you so wholly unable to discuss THE ACTUAL POINT OF THE POST? Do you try to change the subject whenever the current one makes you uncomfortable? Did you know that was exactly how the Politburo behaved?
And if you write negative comments about the militsya, it’s a criminal offense.
http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/07/07/russian-blogger-sentenced-over-livejournal-comment/
At least Putin pays his blogging poodles. In America, MSM kisses rears for free.
Kolchak
Well said.
Wow, ReTaRd has so few friends due to his obvious personality failure, that he has time to set up multiple blogs, that will never be read by anyone.
I wonder what his boss has to say about his time wasting activities?
His boss? Well, maybe something among these lines:
“You were sent to USA for long-term service trip. Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc – all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to act like a complete retard on the Internet. (Good job comrade, so far.)”