“While, in the past, companies have created fake citizens’ groups to campaign in favor of trashing forests or polluting rivers, now they create fake citizens. Messages purporting to come from disinterested punters are planted on listserves at critical moments, disseminating misleading information in the hope of recruiting real people to the cause. Detective work by the campaigner Jonathan Matthews and the freelance journalist Andy Rowell shows how a PR firm contracted to the biotech company Monsanto appears to have played a crucial but invisible role in shaping scientific discourse.”
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