This article builds on ethnographic research among an emergent group of self-styled political consultants and digital influencers in India to highlight the contours of what is defined here as “shadow politics” and its implications for disinformation research and policy. Shadow politics refers to the dual structure of “official” and “unofficial” streams of campaign organization that can integrate diverse influence actors with the party campaign system. The specificity of this form of political influence management emerges from the growing uptake for digital tools and how commercial consultants anchor “data” to the goal of “narrative building” to favor their political clients, thereby delinking data practices from the moor of political moralities. It sets the stage to draw extreme content as one data type among many to choose from. Through such data practices, a vast substratum of indirectly sanctioned influence operators is linked to the public campaign stream as a “shadow,” with incentive structures to “innovate” upon excitable and inflated content.

中文翻译：

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影子政治：印度的商业数字影响者、“数据”和虚假信息

本文以印度新兴的一群自称为政治顾问和数字影响者的人种学研究为基础，强调了此处定义的“影子政治”的轮廓及其对虚假信息研究和政策的影响。影子政治是指“官方”和“非官方”竞选组织的双重结构，可以将不同的影响力参与者与政党竞选体系融为一体。这种形式的政治影响力管理的特殊性源于数字工具的日益普及，以及商业顾问如何将“数据”锚定到“叙事构建”的目标以支持其政治客户，从而将数据实践与政治道德脱钩。它为将极端内容绘制为多种可供选择的数据类型中的一种奠定了基础。通过这种数据实践，大量受到间接制裁的影响力运营者作为“影子”与公共竞选流联系起来，并通过激励结构对令人兴奋和膨胀的内容进行“创新”。