Via Wikipedia I've discovered a definition of internet sockpuppeting from the New York Times.
The act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one's self, allies or company.
Wikipedia also makes this important point:
The key difference between a sockpuppet and a regular pseudonym...is the pretense that the puppet is a third party who is not affiliated with the puppeteer.
It goes on to list examples of noted individuals who have been caught sockpuppeting over the years. Is that list about to lengthen? On Friday I returned from a few days away to discover the Tory Troll claiming to have denuded another significant sockpuppeter. The naked hand, said the Troll, belongs to none other than Andrew Gilligan, formerly of the BBC and more recently, of course, the chief political attack hack of Veronica Wadley's Evening Standard.
The Troll's delicate nose first wrinkled when he read the second paragraph of Gilligan's recent salvo against critics of bendy bus-haters.
There's a certain mad nobility in the way Boris's opponents seem determined to strap themselves to the most unpopular causes going. You wonder what's next a support group for double-glazing salesmen? A bid to rehabilitate that misunderstood feminist icon, demonised by the Right-wing media, Rose West?
Where had the Troll read something like that before? Well, there was an anonymous comment posted at his blog on the 3rd October:
There's a certain mad nobility in this blog's obsessive support for the most unpopular vehicles in London. What's next - a campaign to rehabilitate Rose West?
And then there was this:
"There's a certain mad, self-destructive nobility in the Ken Left's dogged defence of some of the most disliked things in London - Sir Ian Blair, bendy buses."
That was posted here, three days later, under the name "kennite".
Now, kennite is a pseudonym familiar to me as it will be to readers of this blog and of articles by me and others about the London mayoralty on other Guardian sites. It's always been obvious he was a dedicated Boris supporter and backer of the Evening Standard's anti-Livingstone line on bendys and other matters. I'd thought he might be a member of Johnson's campaign team. Certainly, his interventions were rather predictable so I'd stopped paying him much attention. It had never crossed my mind that he could be Andrew Gilligan in disguise. After all, Gilligan had commented at Guardian sites under his own name, so why would he hide behind a false one?
That's a curiosity, but even if kennite is indeed Gilligan it's not necessarily a sin. Commenters use pseudonyms for a variety of reasons, good ones included, and I know that other players in London mayoral politics comment under pseudonyms here. However, sockpuppeting takes pseudonymity into more controversial territory. It is a pretence of a different order, one designed to create a false impression of support for an individual and their position on an issue. It involves praising yourself while pretending you are someone else. If Gilligan is kennite, then he has clearly engaged in this activity. The Tory Troll found this example of kennite's work from a thread under a piece I wrote about Livingstone's LBC radio programme.
"Dave Hill's famously unbiased reporting has unfortunately omitted to mention the several callers who suggested that Ken was "bitter," that he should stop "slagging off Boris Johnson" and that his mayoralty had "lost its way." As for Ken's claim that Gilligan is obsessed with him, I counted about fifteen mentions of Gilligan. Who, exactly, is the obsessive one here?"
Also, this, responding to a piece by Polly Toynbee attacking Johnson last July.
Polly's absurd description of Boris Johnson as a "sociopath" betrays, I think, her real panic about his excellent chance of sweeping away Ken. Nor will it do to write off everyone who opposes Ken or New Labour as, by definition, a Daily Mail reactionary. If Polly had ever read any of Gilligan's columns, she would see someone writing from a broadly left-wing, if anti-New Labour, perspective.
What attitude should be taken to sockpuppeting? At one level it is just a prank, albeit one that can make perpetrators look egotistical and silly when they're exposed. It's hardly a crime. But some employers in the media have taken a dim view of their writers indulging in it. In September 2006, The New Republic suspended one of its editors Lee Seigel after he was found to have sockpuppeted on his own TNR blog. In April of the same year the LA Times suspended the blog of financial reporter Michael A Hiltzik after he admitted sockpuppeting both at his own blog and at others.
Will Veronica Wadley be annoyed if she becomes satisfied that Gilligan has been sockpuppeting at the Guardian and elsewhere? Is it a pastime the editor of "London's Quality Newspaper" is happy for her journalists to engage in? I have no idea, but there appear to be grounds for her to take an interest in the matter. Gilligan commented at the Tory Troll's second post on the issue, but didn't take the opportunity to deny being "kennite." I have received no reply to the emails I sent him yesterday evening and this morning inviting him to do so. Neither has Gilligan responded to challenges about sockpuppeting placed under his "mad nobility" piece by Tom of Boris Watch and Time Out's Peter Watts, who has been following developments too.
This blog is eager to provide a platform for a variety of guest posters. Should Andrew Gilligan wish to enlighten me about any connection he has with kennite and the reasons for it should one exist, I will be more than happy to publish his words here - under his real name, and everything.
