Astroturfing: The True Problem of Its Use

 Aaron Liles 

al508219@ohio.edu

Source: Fameable

What really is astroturfing?

Astroturfing can be most easily explained by looking at the textbook definition for it; "organized activity that is intended to create a false impression of a widespread, spontaneously arising, grassroots movement in support or opposition to something (such as a political party) but that is in reality initiated and controlled by a concealed group or organization  (such as a corporation)." This is what makes astroturfing so popular to companies, it simulates a real uprising of people either supporting or opposing an issue at hand. 

The term astroturfing was coined by U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen as a result of him receiving mountains of letters promoting industry interests, and these letters were deemed not to be from genuine humans. That is just the beginnings of astroturfing however, as it has ballooned in uses by companies attempting to promote their own self-interests or even their own products. An example of this could be a company hiring people to write fake reviews to make it seem like their product is more popular than it really is. It is estimated that up to around one-third of all reviews online are not true reviews by people who actually have used what they were reviewing. 

The problem with astroturfing

For companies/organizations it can be very tempting to use astroturfing methods in order to promote something, but this would not be a wise choice for many reasons. For one, is is stated in the code of ethics by the Public Relations Society of America that astroturfing is prohibited. Not only that, many countries themselves have laws prohibiting astroturfing including but not limited to, the United States. If the general public were to find out that a company was using astroturfing, that company could find themselves in a PR nightmare. 

With all of this information at hand, why would a company want to do this with all of the ethical issues associated with it? The ease of doing it is why companies do it, it is very easy to pay people to write fake reviews, and it can get results quickly. Many popular companies have took part in using astroturfing including McDonald's, Comcast, and Walmart just to name a few. This just goes to show that astroturfing is all around us, and it can be hard to avoid. Hopefully these companies will start to realize that using these deceptive methods of promotion are not truly effective, and more often than not cause harm that will be hard to get rid of.