Contractors from a "Private Research Company". They report summary information to a liaison officer and answer specific inquiries with more detailed information.
The Feds keep their hands clean. They are not even supposed to read these blogs on their own time.
Every major blog, and quite a few obscure ones have an assigned monitoring team. All contractors. There is more than one company doing this, and more than one agency getting reports. They all keep different lists for different reasons but there is a lot of overlap. The agencies do not necessarily play nice with each other.
Rush Limbaugh and a few other radio hosts used to at least skim FR and mention it on the air.
Does anyone on radio still visit FR?