Brandon Goddard
Everyone wants to display their support of ideals or people they have a vested interest in. It has become common place to see people starting websites, polls, or even social media pages dedicated to that support. It has been normalized to the common online user, but with the massive growth of social media it has become even more difficult to ascertain a genuine individual’s effort versus a backhanded corporate tactic. This tactic is not new nor is it something people lack exposure to, but social media has created a new shadow for it to hide in while quietly pushing a separate sponsor’s desired message. I am talking about Astroturfing.
Grassroots movements are extremely powerful as an individual tends to have more reasons to support their fellow average citizen, someone who shares the same experiences as them. Grassroots organizing allows consumers to speak directly about their experiences and the effect of policies and programs. A strong grassroots base allows organizations to collect stories from consumers, and these stories become powerful weapons in any policy campaign. It is exceedingly effective because it essentially reflects the will of the people or individual. There’s no corporate filter and no ulterior motives, just people seeking change for the betterment of the common person and community. That is until politicians and businessmen recognized this sort of movement’s usefulness and attempted to employ the same tactics through fabrication. Also known as Astroturfing. Companies create misinformation or quite literally ‘sponsor’ people to support them under the guise of a grassroots movement in an attempt to sway public opinion positively on them. One of the most prevalent examples was the spoof video of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which had two hard sides of support of criticism on its views of Global Warming. One man carried such strong views he made a criticism spoof video that went viral. But who was this man that put such effort and time into portraying Gore as some cartoon villain? Turns out it wasn’t a man, afterall. The Wall Street Journal traced it back to DCI Group, a PR and lobbying firm employed by Exxon Mobil. An Exxon spokesman for one of the largest publicly traded international oil and gas companies denied any funding or approval of such a thing.
Considering the effect this video had on people’s perceptions of the work and how burning gas affects our planet, I am curious if it benefited Exxon Mobil’s agenda? Who knows, only Sherlock Holmes could put together the pieces of such an impossible mystery.
With the rise of social and technology, Astroturfing has taken on new faces. With fan pages on Facebook, unofficial accounts supporting some policy under the guise of a motivated individual, and even falsified reviews. Social media’s role in contributing to the crazy escalation of astroturfing is hard to ignore. Decades ago, astroturfing relied on offline tactics to gain traction and attention, with journalists not too far behind to figure out the legitimacy. But now any person can create a social media account to astroturf on, allowing them to freely distribute misinformation and interact directly with audiences. In this online era of “citizen journalism” everyone has to be more careful in what information and news they trust.
The reason of why astroturfing in this whole industry is clearly illustrated by the author and the picture explanation also do helps to the explanation to the viewpoints.
ReplyDeleteYichen Wei
yw130215@ohio.edu