The astroturfed lawns of Parliament House

Last week I discussed astroturfing in my micro environment - how online user reviews of products and places risk skewing my opinions, and thus where I spend my hard earned cash. I think this line of inquiry is highly relevant to our target audience of high-frequency web users, who rely on these websites for information. Neilsen reveals that 70% of Australians trust online reviews - more so than advertising or even editorial newspaper content. 

However I am also interested in broadening the scope of our project to think about astroturfing in a political context. This is especially relevant considering the 2013 Australian Federal election, and most significantly the 2012 US Presidential election.

Truthy is an investigative website run by the Indiana University Center for Complex Networks & Systems Research. The team at truthy use social media data mining to identify malpractice in social media. 

One example is that they found the Twitter account @PeaceKaren_25 had generated more than 10,000 tweets in a few months. They found that another account, @HopeMarie_25, was created 10 minutes later. This account simply retweeted all tweets from @PeaceKaren_25 while producing no original tweets of its own. 

Almost all of the 20,000-odd tweets from the two accounts support Republican candidates, especially US House GOP leader John Boehner. 

This kind of systematic political astroturfing would be difficult to seek out without the complex software that Truthy have at their disposal. However it is an important decision for this project, as it removes it entirely from the commercial sphere into a more murky politcal one.

Lawyer Matthew Hall told ABC Radio national that astroturfing for commercial gain is illegal. However, outside of this, there is no legislation against political astroturfing, however much it may be frowned upon. Astroturfing is one of the murky grey areas inside social media and the law. 

Taki Oldham took on political astroturfing in his 2010 documentary Astroturf Wars. Though Oldham focuses on real-life astroturfing, a lot of the same principles apply to online propaganda. 

Finally, Mumbrella, an Australian media and marketing news and comment website, has a long history of associations with finding and commenting on astroturfing. Tim Burrowes, their Editor-in-Chief, would make an excellent interview for our piece. It is interesting that people attempt to astroturf in their comments, and the other commenters and administrators are always quick to pick it up. Have a read through these comments on a Liberal Party 'Staycation' promotional video. Tim Burrowes quickly picks up the same IP addresses from multiple commenters defending the video. 

Tim's response is greeted gleefully by commenters. I think that being caught astroturfing is worse PR than not doing it in the first place. Political astroturfing is going to muddy the waters a little bit - because people are often much more passionate about political issues and ideas than they are about products. Who's to know if someone who is commenting positively on a controversial issue is astroturfing or simply passionate about the issue? 

I think that as our project develops, we'll come across more examples. I think a gallery of screenshots of suspected astroturfing could be an interesting - and sometimes humerous - web resource.