Astroturfing
Manufacturing the appearance of spontaneous public support for a position, through paid letters, staged demonstrations, or fabricated accounts, so that an interested party's campaign looks like a movement.
Officials and audiences weigh a message by how many people seem to hold it. Astroturfing fakes the count. Where the front group fakes a speaker, astroturf fakes a crowd: identical letters to editors and legislators, a rally with bussed-in attendees, a wave of reviews, a hashtag pushed by a few hundred accounts. The name, Senator Lloyd Bentsen's coinage in 1985 for a mailbag of manufactured letters, contrasts it with the grass roots it imitates.
The device is bandwagon built by an organization. Its tell is uniformity: real movements are noisy and various; manufactured ones say the same thing in the same words, on the same day. Exploits Social Proof and Bandwagon Effect.
Historical examples
Senator Lloyd Bentsen, receiving a mass of near-identical letters generated by an insurance-industry campaign, said "a fellow from Texas can tell the difference between grass roots and AstroTurf," and the word entered the language. The campaign had supplied the letters; the senators were meant to read them as constituents.
Safire, William. Safire's Political Dictionary. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, entry "AstroTurf"; Stauber, John, and Sheldon Rampton. Toxic Sludge Is Good for You. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995.
The National Smokers Alliance, created for Philip Morris by the public-relations firm Burson-Marsteller in 1993 and funded by the industry, presented itself as a three-million-member grassroots organization of smokers defending their rights against restrictions. Its membership figures, organizers, and funding were the industry's.
Givel, Michael. "Consent and Counter-Mobilization: The Case of the National Smokers Alliance." Journal of Health Communication 12, no. 4 (2007): 339–357; Stauber and Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You (1995).
In advertising and commerce
Working Families for Wal-Mart was launched in 2005 as a grassroots group of supporters and was revealed to be organized and funded by the company through its public-relations firm Edelman, which also ran a blog by a couple "traveling America in an RV" who turned out to be on the firm's payroll. Edelman apologized in 2006.
"Wal-Mart's PR Firm Apologizes for Blog," The New York Times, 21 October 2006; Stauber and Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You (1995), on PR-built citizen groups.
Find a campaign that describes itself as grassroots. Who registered its website? Who is its spokesperson employed by? Do its supporters say anything in their own words?
In the wild
Short examples of the technique at work, each with what to notice. The same examples are questions in the quiz, where the answer is not given away.
The editor received 400 letters supporting the pipeline in one week; 380 shared the same three sentences.
What to notice. Manufactured public support; the identical wording is the tell.
The rally's "concerned residents" arrived on chartered coaches and were paid a day rate by a firm hired by the developer.
What to notice. A crowd built to order to look like a spontaneous movement.
A new product has 2,000 five-star reviews in its first week, most from accounts with no other reviews.
What to notice. Astroturf in its retail form; fake reviews is the specific digital-era entry for it.
Sources
- Stauber, John, and Sheldon Rampton. Toxic Sludge Is Good for You. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995. ISBN 978-1567510607
- Givel, Michael. "Consent and Counter-Mobilization: The Case of the National Smokers Alliance." Journal of Health Communication 12, no. 4 (2007): 339–357. doi:10.1080/10810730701326002
- Walker, Edward T. Grassroots for Hire: Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-1107619012
- Safire, William. Safire's Political Dictionary. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0195343342