Lost Within the Truth

Samantha Hamilton 

Sh548815@ohio.edu

Lost Within the Truth

This week’s blog post is all about Astroturfing, “Fake Grassroots Organizations.” I have heard of the concept before, but this week I have done some more research. What I found was very scary. Who knows what the truth is anymore? Since I am studying in a field of journalism this was a frightening site to see. Learning that there is an Astroturf job outlet everywhere. It was even put into perspective as an “alternative reality” by Sharyl Attkisson giving a TED talk at University of Nevada. 

These fake ads, protesters, comments, articles, blogs, are everywhere. They are all being paid by someone to put all this information out there to confuse you and alter your decision making. There is a whole agenda getting released with the only purpose to convince you that you are wrong for thinking and believing the way you do. We are all oblivious to the fact our thoughts and actions are being controlled. This is ethically and morally wrong, yet people are doing it daily with no consequences. 

It is harder to deceiver what is true anymore, making it impossible to catch someone in the act of astroturfing. One of the trickiest types of astroturfing is when companies outsource for people to comment on Google or Yelp with bad reviews. In this article by Job Brodkin he states that this investigation on specific companies took over a year in investigating. This is happening everywhere and trying to uncover this fake news is taking years. 

“Unfortunately, astroturfing isn’t likely to go away, making it difficult for consumers to distinguish real reviews from fake ones," Brodkin writes. "The AG's office cited Gartner research predicting that 'by 2014, between 10 percent and 15 percent of social media reviews will be fake.'" 

An article posted by the Washington Past about Astroturfing that was to come in 2016 during the presidential election. The three different types of political astroturfing that is popular on the internet suggested by this article are, the bots, coordinated posters, the dark-money memes. Here is one example in the article of the dark money memes:

It is easier to get away with more online ads then newspapers or on TV. “the Federal Election Commission doesn’t require campaigns to declare themselves in their online ads—and there are even fewer requirements for online ads run by third parties.” 

Feeling lost in the truth is the perfect way to describe the effect of Astroturfing and I think there needs to be a change.