A bold labour union offensive targeting the environmental policies of the Ontario government is being driven largely by a sophisticated marketing campaign that has planted comments to "create online conversations" promoting coal, nuclear and other power options.
The marketing has involved professional bloggers working for M THIRTY, a Toronto-based communications firm, who actively use social media websites such as Facebook or Twitter to simulate or kick-start online conversations with a consistent message promoting the views of their clients.
In this case, the Ontario Power Workers' Union bankrolled the campaign...
A little further down the article mentions the blog Enviralment as being part of the campaign:
She also posted a link to a blog called "Enviralment" — also produced by M THIRTY — that cast
doubts about the actions of the McGuinty government in Ontario. "What's the deal with this?" she asked, posting a link to the blog post: "McGuinty Scraps Offshore Wind Projects in Ontario."
And then a little later down:
[The messages] were spread on social media and shared on M THIRTY blogs with green-sounding names such as "Enviralment" and "Envirogy."
Enviralment can be found here. Unfortunately, it can also be found here, on the Progressive Bloggers blogroll. I would humbly suggest that ProgBlog owners have it removed: the folks behind it are shills for the PWU.
Secondly, I've written a couple of times about my suspicions re John LaForet's Wind Concerns Ontario group and its possible ties to the power workers. Well, there are numerous connections between WCO and the astroturf campaign described above: a quick look at the Enviralment page, for example, shows how heavily it has promoted WCO over the past couple of years, for example here and here. And Envirogy, another flog associated with the PWU effort, is on the WCO blogroll. Also, the marketing group behind the PWU campaign, M Thirty, employs a gentleman/woman employing the pseud "Vic De Zen" who occasionally posts to the Wind Concerns Facebook page.
In any case, a real scuzzy effort by the PWU. It would be nice to know if Andrea Horwath supports it.
8 comments:
I always suspected Enviralment was a flog, I just couldn't figure out who they were flogging for.
I was just writing the same blog post, right down to musing about WCO. Anyway, reading Enviralment, I mean, really. I don't mind opposing views, but declare obvious conflicts.
Interestingly enough, I went over to their website to see if I could contact someone to have them answer to the flogging charge, and i now see that the Enviralment blog is now "down for maintenance". I wonder how long that will be for.. and I wonder how long it's been down for maintenance.. since this blogpost was written perhaps?
Envirogy is down now as well - same message.
Check out the M Thirty website under People/Sharecasting which includes a bunch of "Influencers". They look like they could be some of the obnoxious commenters we all run across too often.
http://www.mthirty.com/#/people/sharecasting
It's Energy, Stupid! is also down. They are all WordPress blogs, though. Some of the older blogs on the MThirty website have different software.
http://itsenergystupid.ca/
Asked on facebook if they were associated with Enviralment and here's reply:
Wind Concerns Ontario: "Absolutely NOT! We are a grassroots coalition of residents facing the onslaught of industrial wind development in our respective areas. No we are not getting funding from the coal or nuclear industry or anybody else."
I don't believe wind concerns is associated with PWU because Wind Concerns is tied in with the PC campaign, and PC party is basically died with PWU - why you ask? Well think back to when Harris and the boys were in power and what they did to the nuclear industry - it wasn't pretty, they shut lots of nucs, and brought in Americans. So I'd think carefully about even thinking the PWU would essentially get into bed with Cons.
Post a Comment