The Grass is (Artificially) Greener

Gregory Petersen
gp420718@ohio.edu

 

 

It is hard to discuss Astroturfing without first addressing the cleverness of its name. Astroturfing is an artificial grassroots movement, that is funded by a corporation or affluent organization rather than something that is community driven. The difference here is that an astroturfing movement is packaged to look like it was created from much more meager means.

photo credit: Featurepics

Virgil Scudder sums up this situation perfectly when he says, “Employees will almost always behave in a manor that they think management expects.”  If management pushes for the good of the company above the good of the public, there are inherent ethical concerns. Clandestine marketing can look like a natural plan.

The most general aspirations of marketing and branding are to raise awareness of the organization. Companies like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola pay a significant amount of their operating budgets to make their organizations immediately recognizable, sometimes with just a color or simple icon. In astroturfing, however, this is not the goal.

The tobacco industry is involved, which should not be surprising. This is not meant to directly question the integrity of the tobacco companies because, quite frankly, their disregard for public health is already well known. That aside, there are so many restrictions on cigarette advertising that the only thing that might make sense for them is to go undercover.

Like Americans Against Food Taxes was not created by actual concerned Americans, the National Smokers Association was not created by a group of organized smokers, but funded by the tobacco industry. In this vein, it has been suggested that this has stretched to political parties. The Tea Party, according to the Huffington Post, may have been started, or at least influenced, by astroturfing practices.

The problem here is that these astroturfing campaigns look real. Something that begins with “citizens for,” has the sound that a group of people who had concerns and decided to do something about it. There is a degree of nobility to the sound, and that does not mean that everything that is grassroots is necessarily false. In fact, grassroots have changed history, as evidenced by the success of Barrack Obama’s campaign, which was fueled by genuinely concerned citizens.

John Oliver states, “Astroturfing is a serious threat to our public discourse.” It is an easy hiding place for someone looking to plant self-serving seeds, and make it look like it is someone else’s idea. The concept itself—albeit devious—has a certain level of brilliance to it. It is like getting what you want, and making it seem like you are doing a public service in doing so.