Politicians to the Public: "Kiss My Asstroturf."

Valeria Santizo

vs178718@ohio.edu

Astroturfing is the act of creating a campaign with fake grassroots that gives people the impression that large numbers of individuals are demanding or opposing something. It is interesting to learn that astroturfing is not a new concept, it is however taking on a new face. With the rise of technology and social media astroturfing is becoming harder to detect. This can be very alarming as we don’t realize how this can alter our perception until someone calls It out. To be completely honest I have never heard of this term until this week’s reading. However, now that I know what it is, my viewpoint has been changed on a number of topics.

Take for example the upcoming election for the 2020 presidential campaign. USA Today’s news reporter, Josh Rivera, gave his opinion about how one should be skeptical about 2020 candidates due to astroturfing. This is called astroturf advocacy, and it is defined by Rivera as, “when an organization (or campaign) hasindividuals advocate on its behalf to make it appear as though the supportoriginates from the grass roots,” (Rivera, 2019).  An example used in this article was the presidential nominee, Andrew Yang. There were a large number of emails received by USA Today when they did a survey on their readers. They asked their readers which candidate is standing out to them the most. When the survey was released to the public, they received an overwhelmingly large number of Yang supporters. Rivera was quick to call out that at first, he was impressed with the candidate but that soon changed his mind when they kept getting these emails supporting Yang. The reason why is because all of the emails they were receiving were all talking about Yang’s policies. At first, I didn’t see what the problem was however, what made this strange is that Yang is polling in low single digits nationally. This can create a problem because tactics like this give candidates false momentum and can alter voters’ perceptions.

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I am interested to see how else astroturfing can affect our perceptions as we keep making technological advances. Social media makes it very easy for people to take on these personas that companies create using, “persona management software.” It is also becoming a lot easier to share ideas and even create campaigns on social media sites like Facebook that promote ideas and create false support. This is why it is important to check sources and question stories that come along online.