Corporate social-media engines track #OccupyWallStreet activists

This one's a two-fer. It from a report in the online version of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

As you read (especially if you click to the whole thing), notice (1) this is marketing data being used, not some super-secret backdoor stats. And (2), the writing is a well-fertilized garden of loaded language. (Start with "the workers against the rich" — not "the people against the rich" — and keep a count.)

Here's the key bit of the article (my emphasis):

Corporations who grab marketing data from Twitter, Facebook and other social media posts are curious about who's behind the Occupy Wall Street protests and the mobilizers of spin-off demonstrations in Boston, San Francisco, and (maybe) Philadelphia.

Here's how it looks to one veteran data miner: "We've been watching it for three weeks. Over the weekend, with the arrests in New York, it's really taking off," he told me. "The volumes have increased 20X, 30X. There are millions of communications."

What's the message? "Politics this year, it's going to be the workers against the rich."

Who's behind it? Legacy socialists? College-town anarchists? Professors? The Democrats? "I don't know if the Democrats are involved. I have no evidence of that. It really looks like labor," he told me.

I've said all along that the excuse for data-mining personal information will always be the need to advertise (because, hey, who could object to ads?). But "marketing" data is always politically useful.

Here's a great instance. This data can be bought; it's even a profit source for the company that collects it. (I'm starting to think that Facebook is evil. You supply the content, and they sell it off. Thoughts?)

So what's your count of loaded language in just this segment? I find six, if you consider "professors" to be sneering. This writer must have been marinated in 50s anti-commie literature. Later on he gives us "fellow traveling". Really?

By the way, did you notice that no one thinks the Dems are involved? "Our" party is keeping its dabs well off of this one, at least until recently. Would be nice if that changes.

GP