Astroturfing

The term astroturfing, even artificial turf movement called, - especially in the American regions - political public relations and commercial advertising projects that aim to simulate the appearance of a spontaneous grass -roots movement. The aim is to give the appearance of independent public expression of opinion about politicians, political groups, products, services, events and the like, by the behavior of many different and geographically separate individuals is centrally controlled.

Etymology

The term Astroturfing is a beheimatetes in English pun on the term grassroots movement that designates really spontaneous, supported primarily by private initiatives. AstroTurf, however, is a brand name for artificial grass, such as is used in some sports stadiums. Astroturfing is a fake grassroots movement that comes from politicians, governments, corporations or public relations firms rather than individuals.

Methods

Like most forms of propaganda tries Astroturfing, specifically influence and feign a strong public opinion with a certain orientation, the emotions of the public. Most reported cases of astroturfing originate from politics.

The usual method consists in the fact that few people spend a large number of activists who argue for a certain thing. You gain attention by writing, for example, letters and e-mails, post blog entries, spread cross posts or trackbacks. You get from a central instructions on what opinions they express when and where to and how they can ensure that their outrage or recognition, their joy or their anger appears completely spontaneous and unaffected, so that the centrally controlled campaign feel real feelings and leaves concerns. Often local newspapers victims of astroturfing by publishing letters that were sent with the same content to other newspapers.

The cost of Astroturfingkampagnen are greatly diminished by the efficiency of the Internet and e -mail. It is also working on software that is designed to simplify individual activists, a larger number to manage user accounts in blogs, Internet forums and social networks and generate apparent opinion majorities with them.

Astroturfing may be described as the acquisition of methods of Grassrootscampaigning by actors who can not claim a respected as a democratically - legitimate bottom- up approach, but by central coordination and funding a top-down embossing own (→ Top-down and bottom- up), but this secret. Following the Grassrootscampaigning Astroturfing was also called Grassroots lobbying. Since clandestine lobbying as Astroturfing lacks the legitimacy of grassroots movements, it is considered a problem when Astroturfing is identified as such:

"Once uncovered, reap such actions almost always a negative press coverage. The media have an important control function, when it comes to reveal fake grassroots campaigns. The negative examples show that Grassrootscampaigning can only work for companies and business associations when playing from the beginning with open cards. Only if the source and financiers of communication activities are transparent, the legitimacy of the Grassroots lobbying is given. "

Examples

Germany

Examples of Astroturfing provide, among other things, the Initiative for a New Social Market Economy ( INSM), the Society for the Promotion of environmentally sound road and traffic planning ( GSV ), the Federal Association of landscape protection, the Action Alliance " my choice " of the Federal Medical Technology Association ( BVMed ) and citizens of Technology.

2009 was known by the civil rights organization LobbyControl that the German railway had issued in 2007 just under 1.3 million euros for the " covert influence on the public." It was created with supposedly independent surveys sentiment against the strike by train drivers in 2007 and for privatization. In addition, forums and blogs like Brigitte.de and Spiegel Online were massively infiltrated with ground- friendly posts. The German Council for Public Relations ( DRPR ) complained why the train and the PR firms EPPA GmbH, Berlin Polis and Allendorf Media. In a similar case, the EPPA GmbH was covert PR on the subject of biofuels in order, in which the Agency Berlin Polis published in Junge Welt, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau and Focus Online purported letters from citizens of Berlin.

In June 2010, the Free Democratic Party ( FDP) was caught to have repeated FDP - friendly comments in the blog forum ruhrbarone.de discontinued. The DRPR spoke then of a public reminder in the direction of the federal branch of the FDP, there had been " injured, especially the requirement of transparency for public relations in the political arena " by this behavior.

Even companies such as the German Telekom have made fake from a text agency apparently customer reviews to pretend as a lively debate on customers various products in their own shopping portal can.

Switzerland

The Zurich-based company Poolside AG had early December 2012 enlisted on behalf of the Advertising Agency Switzerland AG five students who were paid over several weeks for it, in popular Swiss news portals under a series of false identities targeted sentiment against the federal popular initiative "against the rip-off " to making. The sock puppets campaign was after a few weeks revealed by research conducted by the Tages-Anzeiger and adjusted thereafter. The advertising Institution Switzerland AG had previously been paid by the Swiss business federation Economiesuisse to perform a poster campaign against the popular initiative, but the campaign manager of the Business Association denied a connection. The popular initiative was finally adopted with a yes - vote share of 67.9 %.

Other countries

The Chinese human rights activists and journalism professor Xiao Qiang explained in 2008 based on internal government documents, such as government agencies in the People's Republic of China with specially trained Internet commentators who manipulate 50 - cent party ( so named after the amount to be paid to them for a posting ), virtual debates.

The blogger Richard Silverstein sent one of his readers during Operation Cast Lead in early 2009 a discussion guide of the Israeli Foreign Ministry for volunteers to internet forums of international media defend Israel's military offensive in Gaza. In August 2013, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed reports of a program for the equivalent of 583,000 euros to equip students with scholarships that are spread in exchange pro-Israel postings on Facebook and Twitter.

In February 2012, published a group that called himself a Russian arm of Anonymous allegedly hacked from her e- mail exchanges between the leaders of the youth organization Nashi and a network of bloggers and Internet users. The activities described in them include payments for postings in which the policy of Vladimir Putin praised plans for more than ten million rubles positive article about the annual summer camp of Nashi in the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, Komsomolskaya Pravda and Nezavisimaya Gazeta to purchase, manipulations of the user reviews on YouTube, ideas for an online defamatory campaign against government critics Alexei Navalny and monitoring of LiveJournal entries of the opposition politicians Navalny, Boris Nemtsov and Ilya Yashin.

In the wake of the global surveillance and espionage journalist Glenn Greenwald published in the February 2014 document from the collection of the whistleblower Edward Snowden, will emerge from those that the intelligence agency GCHQ and NSA trying to manipulate online discourse and to control. The presentation, entitled The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations ( dt: The Art of Deception: Training for covert online operations) by the GCHQ Working Group Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group ( JTRIG ) to originate, lists measures to targeted at discrediting of target individuals or companies. Also, are described on the findings of the social sciences -based tactics with which to influence Internet debate and control to a desired goal towards left.

Even Microsoft has already used Astroturfing. Have become known numerous cases where letters of support were forged in the American anti - trust case, or at least pre-formulated, some of these letters even in the name of the deceased. Student bodies at many German universities were given in addition in January 2011 E- mail homonymous contents of an alleged student, which called for a use of a Microsoft product like Tomboy or Zim. These mails were not sent by a university address, but from a separate IP subnet from Microsoft.

The accusation of Astroturfing was loud even against the Occupy Wall Street movement. The movement was to characterize by L. Gordon Crovitz, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, a successful example of a social marketing -globalization Foundation and its media, especially the Adbusters Media Foundation, and less than a grassroots movement. It is also dishonest to criticize aspects of Astroturfing at the American Tea Party movement and to ignore this at Occupy Wall Street. It is also their influential advocate, as Nancy Pelosi and the economist Jeffrey Sachs and Joseph E. Stiglitz, directed. On the other hand, Peter Dreier wrote in an article for the Huffington Post that the Tea Party movement would financially and medially strongly supported by industry-related sources, while comparable in Occupy Wall Street not the case.