During the boom times of the dot-com 1990s, the Internet was hyped as a technology that would have profound and positive effects on human communication. The sobering effects of the current economic downturn have dulled the luster of this rhetoric, but the Internet remains an important terrain for both corporations and their activist critics.

This issue of PR Watch looks at the perspectives of both sides as they continue to innovate new cyber-techniques for activism and for combatting activism. Companies fear that the Internet will "destabilize business and borders" by helping activists organize quickly, cheaply and internationally. They fear that the Internet may lead to too much democracy, overwhelming representative government and making it harder to "filter" information before it reaches the public.

On the other hand, the Internet has opened new vistas to corporate PR specialists. Some PR firms now specialize in using the Internet to spy on activist groups so that they can figure out how to neutralize them early. The Internet is also an important organizing tool for right-wing political operatives such as Jack Bonner, Richard Viguerie and Bruce Eberle, as they experiment with new ways to raise money and mobilize their troops. Some flacks are aggressively mimicking activist tactics, such as lobbyist Rick Berman, whose Center for Consumer Freedom (www.consumerfreedom.com [1]) pretends to be a "watchdog organization" exposing the "anti-consumer agenda" of environmental and health organizations.

These scams are offensive in and of themselves, and they undermine the real democratic potential of the Internet, deliberately introducing noise in place of signal and confusion in place of communication. In order for the communications revolution to achieve its real potential, these efforts at spinning the web should be debunked and subjected to the healthy ridicule that they often deserve.