Another instance occurred involving "Griffin" and an environmentalist who posted a picture of a rendition of Mother Earth saying "Mother Earth Has Been Waiting for Her Day in Court, BP." "Griffin" posted a comment to the picture that read, "A few rounds from a .50 cal will stop that b**ch."
According to Marie, Lockman and GAP, BP's "astroturfing" efforts and use of "trolls" have been reported as pursuing users' personal information, then tracking and posting IP addresses of users, contacting their employers, threatening to contact family members, and using photos of critics' family members to create false Facebook profiles, and even threatening to affect the potential outcome of individual compensation claims against BP.
Marie, along with several other targets of harassment, wrote and sent two letters to BP America, asking the company to respond to the allegations and deal with the matter. Neither letter received a response, which is why Marie decided to contact GAP, as well as the law firm.
While Marie's evidence appears to tie Ogilvy and BP together via the trolls, the law firm Lockman works for is investigating further, in order to conclusively determine the extent of BP's involvement.
Spinning the disaster
Stephen Marino worked for Ogilvy during the BP disaster. BP had been a client of Ogilvy for five years before the spill, and when the disaster occurred, "we were responsible for all the social media for BP during the spill", Marino said during a lecture he gave at the University of Texas, Austin, on April 19, 2012.
His team, which he called the "digital influence team", was "responsible for the crisis response". Marino told the audience that his job during the BP disaster was to run a " reputation management campaign " and gave this specific example of the depths to which Ogilvy worked to maintain a positive appearance for BP:
"We were putting out ads, if you guys remember those ads that came out where it would be Iris in the Gulf of Mexico and she'd be talking about how she grew up there and she wasn't going to go away," he explained . "The way we were working with the strategy on that was we would cut the ads one day, we would edit them overnight, we'd air them on Tuesday let's say, and then we'd look at social media to see what the response was to the ads - and based upon the feedback we were getting on social media, the advertising agency would then go back and re-cut the ads to fix the message to make it resonate more with what the constituents wanted" that was the first key strategy."
Chris Paulos, an attorney with the firm investigating Marie's case, believes this is a perfect example of "subversive attempts by corporations to put forward their ideology of what we should think about them, and doing it in a way that is not decipherable to the average person".
According to Paulos, the public should be concerned about this because we can no longer tell if people online are truly who they say they are, "or are working for a corporation and talking their script to control the dialogue about whatever issue they are addressing".
"We are in unprecedented times with technology, and [in] the disparity between the power of corporations and autonomous consumers," Paulos told Al Jazeera. " Citizens United has basically emboldened corporations with their ability to speak as individuals with First Amendment rights. Ever since that decision, corporations have been outspoken and vigorously protecting themselves while doing it."
BP's response
Billie Garde, BP's deputy ombudsman, in a letter to the Government Accountability Project dated December 18, 2012, stated clearly that "BP America contracts management of its Facebook page to Ogilvy Public Relations" and added, "Ogilvy manages all of BP America's social media matters".
Interestingly, Garde's letter addressed the fact that, at that time, according to Ogilvy's data, 91 percent of all the comments on BP's Facebook page were considered to be "unsupportive" of BP, while only nine percent were considered "supportive." She added that "in previous years, the number of comments that were 'unsupportive' of BP was larger than the present 91 percent."
Her letter stated that Ogilvy follows a "three strike" policy for all comments, "meaning if they find a comment to be in violation of the commenting policy, they delete the comment and record a 'strike' against the user, and three strikes means a user is no longer able to comment on the page. It is also noted that Ogilvy will delete offending comments and send a note to the user indicating the comment was inappropriate."
Garde added: "BP America has informed our office that Ogilvy strictly adheres to the Commenting Policy as stated on the BP America Facebook page. This policy serves as the guidelines that Ogilvy follows when evaluating the appropriateness of comments. Ogilvy does not evaluate a comment with respect to it being a positive or negative statement towards BP. Likewise, they do not delete any comments based on either of these qualifiers."
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