Dark PR Is Now A Business

An article from FTI Consulting discusses the emerging niche practice of “dark PR” in its various forms, from social media campaigns to secretly commissioned articles. Dark PR is defined as “unethical damaging of a client’s reputation or corporate identity,” and apparently it’s a growth industry, although often with layers of contractors that take pains to disguise the source of their commission, so that the extent of the industry is hard to discern. In one well-publicized case from a couple of years ago, Facebook is said to have orchestrated a campaign that raised the specter of privacy problems on a new Google social media product. In China, some fairly large and well-known firms have specialized in dark PR, but it’s also true that Chinese authorities have cracked down on a couple of major players.