– This is a serious overstepping, says professor of political science at the University of Agder, Dag Ingvar Jacobsen to news. The Sørlandspartiet was founded about a year ago in Kristiansand. Since then, work has been done to get the organization and policy up and running. Their goal is to join the city council in the autumn. The website was fake. It was not the party itself that had created it. – This looks really professional. It is not easy to see that these are not real people, says the professor when he gets to see what the website looked like before it was removed. The political content on the website was also made up. – It is deeply problematic that someone takes a name, pretends to be someone else and does it anonymously. This contributes to poisoning the debate, the professor believes. news has been informed that artificial intelligence has been used to create the pictures of the people. Only one of the names used on the page can be found in the public register, shows a review carried out by news. Several texts about what the party wanted to work for were posted on the fake website. The fake website claimed that the party wanted to build a new house of worship in Søgne. The fake website claims, among other things, that the party will work out the development of wind power at Tangen near the center of Kristiansand. Moving the port is a politically sensitive issue in Kristiansand. The fake website claimed that the Southern Party wanted to place a new port in a completely new city. It was claimed that the Southern Party wanted to move Palmesus away from Bystranda in Kristiansand. The website claimed that the Sørlandspartiet wanted to cultivate well-known people and businesses in Kristiansand. Added to Multiconsult was behind The person who made the page is added to the company Multiconsult. news has spoken to the person, who says that in 2013 a group of friends stood at an “election stand” in connection with a stag party. Then they used the name Sørlandspartiet and used election campaign cases as “nonsense”. When the person saw that a party with the name Sørlandspartiet had been established ten years later, this was brought up again. The domain sørlandspartiet.no was purchased and the website was created. The idea was that this should be satire, according to the person behind the page. – I think it is clear that this was a satire page and I wonder if someone may have misunderstood this, says the person and states that it took around half an hour to create the page. The domain was created and registered to the person’s private email address. But on the account required to buy the domain, the work email is registered as a secondary email. – The website was created in my spare time and has nothing to do with my employer, says the person concerned. Multiconsult will not comment on the case. – This is a non-issue for Multiconsult. Multiconsult is not a party to this case, says communications manager Gaute Christensen in the company. news knows that the company has nevertheless used its own lawyers to help its employee. They explain this with their responsibility as an employer. – Multiconsult is a party-politically independent company that will never get involved in party-political websites, fake or real, says Christensen. Multiconsult is often used by municipalities in various projects. Last year, Kristiansand municipality spent more than NOK 5.8 million on services from the company, spread over 58 assignments, according to an overview obtained by news. Two problematic things Professor Dag Ingvar Jacobsen thinks the matter is serious, despite the fact that this was supposed to be innocent satire. – Here there are two things that are problematic. You take a name for an existing party and make it anonymous, says Professor Dag Ingvar Jacobsen. – In a normal debate climate, one would probably have taken this as something funny. But the debate is clearly not open for now, perhaps especially in Kristiansand, says Jacobsen. Dag Ingvar Jacobsen is professor of political science at the University of Agder. Photo: Victoria Marie Nordahl / news Political earthquake The professor refers to the election in 2019, which was referred to as a political earthquake in Kristiansand afterwards. Nils Nilsen, who is now the Sørlandspartiet’s mayoral candidate, played a central role here. He ran the controversial Facebook page Sørlandsnyheten, which was blamed for incitement, harassment and fake news. At the same time, he was on the election list for the Democrats, who received 13.5 percent of the vote. – I see the irony in this. I don’t think those who have created this fake page have ignored what happened in 2019, and wanted to strike back with the same coin, says Jacobsen. The person behind the fake page denies knowledge of what happened in the 2019 election, and will not comment on the matter further. After the previous local election, Nilsen has quarreled with the Democrats. He visited the Industrial and Business Party, where he was kicked out after a heated argument with the mayor of the city council. – People thought it was us After this, Nilsen started the Sørlandspartiet. Now he is faced with something similar to what he himself has been blamed for. – I actually took this with crushing calm. I thought it was a prank that might have gone over. But I got so many reactions that people thought it was us, says Nilsen. Nilsen does not buy the explanation about satire. – People are welcome to think it’s satire. But here the border crossing is not clear. If this was the 5080 Nyhetskanalen or Nytt på Nytt, then fine. But here we have core issues for our party. Port relocation, wind turbines and municipal mergers. There are important matters for us to be clear about, he says. According to Nilsen, the party gradually received many questions about whether it was their side. – When people don’t understand that it is satire, then we have a problem. Then we had to do something, says Nilsen. Nils Nilsen is the Sørlandspartiet’s top candidate for the election. Photo: Siv Kristin Sællmann / news Will report to the police The party has announced that they will report the case to the police. In addition, they have reported the case to the Norwegian Electoral Directorate, which in turn has notified the Ministry of Local Government and District Affairs. They have given the party advice on how this should be handled in line with guidelines against unwanted influence on the election. At the same time, work is being done to get the domain transferred to the Sørlandspartiet. With a few months to go until the election, Professor Dag Ingvar Jacobsen believes that people must be critical of information online. – We have to be very careful about this. There is no doubt that we must take this very seriously, he says.
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Made a fake website about a political party – news Sørlandet – Local news, TV and radio
