Accusations On The Astroturf

Commenting on news websites is increasingly allowing the public to shape information discourses. It provides opportunities for live debate and discernment on the day’s news. Comments collectivley form the reader’s voices; they are effectively online vox pops where readers are able to diversify an audience’s understanding of a particular issue.

But in an age where PR and Corporate Spin is too becoming digitalized, how much faith can we, the audience, put into the neutrality of comments? When audiences scroll SMH, The Daily Telegraph or Yahoo7, they expect comments to be authored by individuals and not for the purposes of business, PR or spin.

But how realistic are those expectations?

Welcome to the world of astroturfing.

Political blogger Adam Bienkov defines astroturfing in broad terms, perpetuating it as an act designed to deceitfully create the illusion of widespread support. The key word here is illusion.

Astroturfers create fake profiles with the click of a button. They then mass comment on a particular website or article to create the illusion that their view is popular, common and shared.

Astroturfing is thus not democratic, it is not creating debate and it is certainly not allowing for a greater expression of opinion.

Ultimately, our group hopes to use our web feature as an opportunity to explore the issue of astroturfing in greater depth. The project is in its early stages, and thus considerations pertinent to audience and angle still need to be assessed.

In exploring astroturfing, one of the difficulties I anticipate will be the challenge of proving astroturfing. As journalist Adam Turner argues, it’s difficult to accuse or highlight the practice of astroturfing when the proof is concealed by fake profiles.

Consider this example. On August 10^th, 2012, Peter Martin of the SMH published an article online about bank ATM fees. The article obviously struck a chord with readers, and it garnered 247 comments before website administrators closed the article for further commenting. As I read the comments, I was amazed at how quickly ING supporters had come together to collectively promote their bank. These were the first three comments posted;

Scrolling down, the suspect case of astroturfing continues.  And if the audience still had not been convinced of ING’s value and superiority, the advertisement to the right of the comments made the key message clear.

As a reader trying to identify practices of astroturfing, the timing and and tone of the comments about ING immediatley drew suspicions. But as our web feature and ideas develop, more thought needs to be given about how we are going to infact be able to identify and prove incidents of astroturfing. Is the evidence prestend above enough to account for an accusation of astroturfing? Does our Web Feauture want to exemplify incidents of astroturfing, or just raise awarness on the malpractice?

More thought and research will hopefully give our feature and my own line of thinking a bit more direction.