What Is Astroturfing?

The Internet and especially social media has peppered our dictionaries with new words and phrases. Additionally, old words and phrases have taken on new meanings. For example, you will often see references to people’s personal information being stolen. How can someone steal something when it remains where it is? You get the drift. 

One such old word with a new meaning is astroturf. What is astroturfing? As astroturf  is a form of synthetic grass or more properly a grass substitute, one might assume astroturfing to be the process of laying down astroturf. That assumption would be wrong.

Astroturf, or more correctly AstroTurf, was developed back in the 1960s before the Internet existed. Astroturfing is a deceptive form of advertising, either for products or more often for ideologies.  The practice is used commercially by companies or more often their PR outfits to talk up the popularity or some other quality of their products. In politics especially it is used to generate the appearance of grassroots support, the pun being intentional.

Fake reviews can be a form of astroturfing. These are not practical for real world media like newspapers, radio and television for obvious reasons. Furthermore, newspaper advertisements etc may cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars, so large companies will often sponsor events, people, or use celebrity endorsements. For example, the cigarette manufacturer Benson & Hedges has a long history of sponsoring snooker tournaments – make of that what you will, while actors, musicians and sportspeople often endorse products. This can be valid, for example, Phil Lynott really did play an Ibanez Roadster bass guitar.

There are no reliable figures for the number of fake reviews on the Internet, but they have a long history and are not always positive. The most important use, or rather misuse of astroturfing comes from political campaigns, not necessarily political parties, but from people pushing some cause or other. The vast majority of these are leftist in nature, very often progressive. 

The modern progressive movement has been a disaster for especially the United States. Its policies have led among other things to the erosion of the southern border, disgraceful levels of homelessness and shocking increases in violent crime. 

Twitter is – or hopefully was – a viper’s nest of toxic astroturfing. Those pushing “woke” ideology were using bots to generate mock outrage, mostly against conservatives, and they had enormous success “cancelling” people and pressurising companies.

This academic paper is heavy reading, but it reveals how astroturfing has been used to sway public opinion, including in a South Korean general election.  

It would be wrong though to suggest that astroturfing exists only on-line. Would you believe there is a company in California called Crowds On Demand? And yes, it does exactly what its title suggests. Here is some blurb from its website:

“Whether your organization is lobbying to move forward a healthcare, financial, energy or other social initiative, we can organize rallies and get media attention for your causes and candidates. We also assist individuals, companies and political organizations with protests and picketing campaigns. We’ve protested governments, corporations and everything in between…If you need to hire protesters, we can get a crowd on the street, sometimes within 24 hours time. ”

Leaving aside the effrontery of it, one has to ask how many of these instant protesters understand what they are protesting for or against. Also, it stands to reason that the campaigns concerned are extremely well-funded. But aren’t progressives opposed to the rich? The mere rich maybe, but not the super-rich.