A number of researchers at some of Sweden’s most prestigious seats of learning made a move in Dagens Nyheter’s debate pages. They claimed that new research results at the universities of Uppsala, Lund, Umeå, Stockholm and Göteborg should be heeded by politicians. The following day, some of Sweden’s best-known writers on cultural matters rallied to their support in a debate article in the cultural pages of Aftonbladet. It described how some internationally renowned intellectual authorities advanced arguments pointing in exactly the same direction as the previous day’s debate article.

This is how opinions are formed. And this is how opinions have been formed throughout the modern era – with one difference. In this particular case, it turns out that not all the players were quite as free as the reading public might have thought. Instead they are linked to a network, whose work is financed by some of the la...