Astroturfing: Is this "normal"?

Ciara Walker
ciaraw74@gmail.com

The air force does it, and so does the tobacco industry. But what is "astroturfing" and how does one know if (or when) he/she is being astroturfed by a faux supporter. Astroturfing is when sponsors of an organization, or even a particular message - mask themselves, but appear to be from people (or groups) that were there from the start. The saddest part is that most of these astroturfing accounts (we like to call them robots on Instagram and Twitter) could have been born moments ago, but appear to have full lives, and a full range of activities (and identities). They even have a wide range of characteristics that you and I would have like an email, an address, and a phone number.

what is astroturfing

In the world we live in today, where being an Instagram influencer is considered "goals", astroturfing is reigning heavily in that realm. Most influencers are targeted to post and campaign for various agendas based on their audiences. For example, fitness guru's are required to post certain content and support various, but they also force them to mask ads and astroturf.  They want the influencers to appear (when they post) as though they aren't sponsored or being paid to post such content, so they have them hide the admissions in their hashtags by using "#SP" to stand for "sponsored post" or "PA" for "paid advertisement". After reading this weeks lesson, I came across an article about an organization that chose to educate their audiences on their views of astroturfing and their view of the ethical dilemmas they have encountered. The talent agency Gushcloud, founded in 2011 in Singapore is Asia's leading influencer agency. They released an article titled "About Astroturfing: Ethics and Values in order to save face. In the blog/article, the agency breaks down their views on why they don't support astroturfing, all while opening our eyes to the various ways in which they do just that.

Asian Instagram Influencer - Gushcloud

Yelp, too! 

When I first learned what the word astroturfing was, I immediately thought of Yelp and the world of reviews. Many sites like Google, and yelp have fake reviews and sponsorships. I remember reading of a bad case of astroturfing gone wrong in NY where the attorney general wanted to highlight how prevalent it was, that he set up a fake yogurt shop, and watched as the "bots" went to work. There should be some sort of guide to detecting astroturfing .