Astroturfing is a stain on the usefulness and legacy of the internet, and in case you’re uncertain I do not mean the surface of a sports field or any artificial grass alternative.
The astroturfing I’m referring to here is a much more insidious and dangerous one: sometimes called greenturfing, it refers to the sponsored faking of grass roots campaigns; paid-for lobbying that gives the illusion of being legitimate or stemming from actual grass roots. The intention is to oppose or discredit a law, company or person.
It’s only new in the relative sense. If you head to Google and search the term, you’ll see the word pops into existence (or usage) from about 1980 (which I suspect is talking about the fake grass kind). We think it was first used in this figurative sense from about 1985.
At around 1990 we see the curve jump up considerably, and at 1999 the line is almost vertical. This is where the new usage seems to come into its own. This growth is also — not coincidentally — aligned with the growth of internet access.
Arguably the most famous, or perhaps prolific, culprits have been large companies in “dirty industry” (think oil) and various international tobacco companies, which have been exposed repeatedly as paying individuals and front groups to create a sense of grass roots opposition to policy. These groups then pop up under the guise of “smoker’s rights groups” or “citizens groups”.
In 1993 in the US, Phillip Morris and others created the National Smokers Alliance (NSA). The Tea Party movement (a collection of economically conservative groups calling for things such as lower taxes) is another area where astroturfing abounds, and their funders include the GOP (Republicans).
If you’re not a climate crisis denialist and can’t fathom why so many people appear to feel conflicted about a subject with overwhelming scientific evidence for one side, you can look to astroturfing for your answers, at least partially.
This is a practice of deliberately muddying the waters and casting doubt on scientifically sound research or policy related to said research. It actually works in two ways: first, creating the illusion of widespread opposition, and second, this opposition finds a willing and real audience, motivated by their own confirmation bias. This is the problem with “motivated beliefs”.
Author and activist George Monbiot, writing in The Guardian in 2006, explained the implications so well: “Using data found in [Exxon’s] official documents ... 124 organisations [were shown to] have taken money from the company or work closely with those that have. These organisations take a consistent line on climate change: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason.”
Astroturfing can also be conducted on a small scale, and the internet has made this particularly possible. For example, if you were a restaurant owner and struggling to compete, you could overhaul your menu and service, or you could pay people to review your competition badly. What you should do and what you can do diverge here drastically, and money is a powerful motivator.
Critical to the definition is tracing the money. I wholly support the right to voice your opinion. But that these groups hide their sources of funding and participate in outright fakery, that’s not OK. And tapping into the natural human instinct to trust “real people” over corporate messaging is monstrously manipulative.
All of this brings me back to the role of the internet and social media. Just off the top of my head I can think of a dozen ways these tools enable astroturfing. Twitter bots is an obvious one. You can use software to manage tens of accounts under the control of one person on Twitter, Facebook or other platforms. A simple website is now easy to create and cheap to run, meaning you can create your own references to back up your claims, and even manipulate search engine results.
This stuff is getting more sophisticated as our tools develop. Faked social media personas can be backdated so it isn’t immediately apparent they are newly set up. You can use a multitude of review sites, including Yelp, TripAdvisor and Hellopeter that have no way of verifying if you are an actual customer or have ever used the product or service you are reviewing. And so on.
A recent study commissioned by Trustpilot and conducted by Canvas8 in the UK shows that 89% of global consumers check online reviews before purchasing. I’d be interested to see a local study of our two-tier internet-access country. And if you want to anonymously blow the whistle on a local company I’d love to hear from you. SA may have a limited internet population, but this is changing and transparency plays an important role in promoting uptake.
• Thompson Ferreira is a freelance journalist, impactAFRICA fellow, and WanaData member.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.