It's smear by Twitter as Labor staffers go underground

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This was published 13 years ago

It's smear by Twitter as Labor staffers go underground

By David Rood

LABOR is infiltrating social media sites to promote John Brumby and smear his political opponents in an underground campaign being run by staffers who work in the Premier's taxpayer-funded private office.

The Age has obtained internal Labor documents revealing the identity, aliases and passwords of more than a dozen Labor players in the Twitter campaign as well as extensive lists of websites and blogs being trawled and manipulated by Labor's social media team.

Each twitter alias has a ''purpose'' labelled either ''Pro Labor'', ''Attack Dog'' or ''Super Attack'', with a member of Labor's three-person social media team responsible for mobilising them as campaign issues arise.

For example, during last week's town hall debate, Steph Antz, who is described as pro-Labor, tweeted: ''What is a billion dollars? ted showed myki. could have shown his car, jet, diamond urinal.''

In a spreadsheet monitoring online forums, a note on an election discussion topic on an English Premier League website read: ''Nothing for days, seems to have petered out. monitor/enjoy them calling peter ryan a c--t.''

The social media team is run by Labor volunteers Phil Barker, James Wilson and Seamus Coleman, who also work in the Premier's private office.

A work roster for the social media unit shows each of the three team members is also working for the Premier's office during the campaign.

Labor campaign director Nick Reece said all three worked for Labor as volunteers in their personal time and the social media team was in no way funded by taxpayers.

Mr Reece said Labor supporters shared their opinions online, just as they did offline, and, just as in everyday life, sometimes those comments would be over the top or inappropriate.

''Every man and his dog has a Twitter account nowadays, including the former prime minister's cat and dog, Jasper and Abbey. I am not aware of anyone being too upset about the pro-Labor bias expressed by Jasper and Abbey,'' he said.

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''Supporters of all parties have always been encouraged to express their views through traditional media, including talkback radio and letters to the editor. This is no different to Twitter.''

Brumby government spokeswoman Fiona Macrae said: ''Taxpayer-funded staff do not engage in campaign tweeting; all campaign tweeting is done by volunteers.''

The documents also include a second list of Labor ''punters'' for Twitter with the warning ''not to be used until the final week'' and notes Labor MPs and candidates who are active on Twitter, including the Premier, Water Minister Tim Holding and Education Minister Bronwyn Pike.

There is also a category of tweeters called ''Obviously ALP'' that target Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu and the Greens. One is Ted Staffer, a ''satire Ted staffer account'', and Anti Greens, a ''Greens attack account''.

Another document, titled ''to do'', lists more than 100 websites under surveillance by the Labor social media unit - from AFL fan sites, to community activist sites such as Save the Victoria College of the Arts, local council home pages and specialist railway websites.

Each entry has the date the site was accessed, the title of discussion topics, aliases for posts and the action required - ''engage or attack''.

Observations in the document include ''posted as jezza'' and ''posted anonymously''.

A note about the website australianpoliticstv.org stated: ''Updated but not comments at all, dunno how much benefit there is with starting a convo with ourselves.''

Another website note says: ''Worth voting in the poll, but I don't think we'll win anyone with comments.''

Other websites being monitored include The Age, the Greens, Yarra Climate Action Now, Ballarat Ultimate (Frisbee), Baby and Bump, Hunt and Shoot Network on Vic Duck Hunting and Doggies Blog.

The social media documents include entries made up until this Thursday and includes a list of more than 70 journalists who are active on Twitter.

A separate document called ''reporting'' records shows who each of the aliases reports to from the social media team, as well as a weekly scorecard of how many followers and new followers they have on Twitter.

There is also a spreadsheet called ''retweet competition'' that lists a ranking of comments reposted on Twitter. All of the comments attack Mr Baillieu or support Mr Brumby.

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