Conflicts of Interests in Environmental Issues: Astroturfing

Joe Nurre 

joenurre@gmail.com 

 

 

Astroturfing is a growing issue for many political and societal conflicts across the nation, and the most common situations are between public groups versus wealthy private corporations are seen. A great example of this is the public clashing with the fossil fuel industry to improve environmental regulations.

 

Picture source: https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/how-the-original-fake-grass-became-an-nfl-favorite/ 

 

In their article How Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Used "Astroturf" Front Groups to Confuse the Public, the Union of Concerned Scientists details the lengths the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) go in distributing misinformation about climate science through artificially created fossil fuels fuel support groups. The article states, “WSPA’s strategy was to use these fabricated organizations to falsely represent grassroots opposition to forward-looking policy on climate change and clean technologies. WSPA and its member companies oppose science-based climate policies that are critically needed to mitigate the damaging impacts of global warming.”

 

These fabricated organizations employed expensive advertising campaigns, influenced political figures, and dispersed misinformation all to confuse the public on how damaging fossil fuels are to the environment. This use of astroturfing is an example of the unethical use of corporate money in gatekeeping a business industry from public and political intervention.

 

Another major use of astroturfing appears online in social media and online forums. “Sockpuppeting” is the method of using false identities, especially in large quantities, to create an artificially public voice in favor of the person or group funding the astroturf.

 

The Iowa Law Review, in their investigative article Ripping Up the Astroturf: Regulating Deceptive Corporate Advertising Methods, tracked down a whistleblower for one of these sockpuppet teams, describing his experience as “Like the other members of the team, he posed as a disinterested member of the public. Or, to be more accurate, as a crowd of disinterested members of the public: he used 70 personas, both to avoid detection and to create the impression there was widespread support for his pro-corporate arguments.

 

Sockpuppeting is a more recent form of astroturf and mainly appears in politically charged platforms such as Twitter and topic-specific text forums. The danger of this method is that it is relatively easy and cheap to produce, so it could impact many smaller-scale issues. The more common sockpuppeting becomes, the more skeptical and paranoid internet discussions will become on their user legitimacy, which can destroy the opportunity of authentic conversations occurring. 

 

These forms of astroturfing are wildly different, but they both prove to show that artificial voices are only developed to silence and confuse authentic grassroots movements. Astroturfing is just another weapon in the arsenal of monolithic corporations maintaining their powerful status through the unethical use of their financial reserves. As Journalists, this is a growing problem with a responsibility to seek transparency through all activists groups, exploring if their motive is authentic or fake as turf-grass.