Astroturfing

Corporations, politicians, scam artists and magicians often employ schills, plants and actors feigning as normal crowd members to direct the crowd's mood or make deceptions seem plausible.

Avoiding Astroturfing

How do you avoid crossing the line into astroturfing while engaged in advocacy? There is a fine line between schilling and packing an audience with supporters.

Anyone who is directly associated with a group that has a conflict of interest in the matter at hand should disclose their involvement before speaking as a member of the public.

Don't be shy about organizing people to support something so long as you are disclosing your affiliations.

Crowd Actor Astroturfing

Nazi Germany

Japan

"They were supposed to be exercises in grass-roots democracy, events during which Japan’s political leaders met and talked with voters more accustomed to a political system in which decisions were simply handed down. The government even baptized them “town meetings,” or “TM,” using English to suggest perhaps that they were something so new, so revolutionary, that their essence could hardly be captured in Japanese. But a government report released Wednesday concluded that two-thirds of the town meetings organized by the Japanese government since 2001 were Soviet-style performances with people paid to ask planted questions — favorable to the government."

—Japan's Leaders Rigged Voter Forums, NYT

"The planted citizens were told to make sure they didn't start off "I was told to say," but their comments often clearly backed the government's plan to overhaul the education law to promote patriotism and civic virtue."

—Japanese Gov't Under Fire For Town Meetings, AP

"The education reform bill triggered controversy, both because of its sensitive content and because of disclosures this week that the government had planted officials posing as ordinary citizens at "town meetings" discussing the measure."

—Japanese Schills Infiltrate Town Meetings, CNN

Hillary Clinton Campaign Question Planting

"I said 'Yeah, can I ask how her energy plan compares to the other candidates' energy plans?'" Gallo-Chasanoff said Monday night.

"'I don't think that's a good idea," the staffer said, according to Gallo-Chasanoff, "because I don't know how familiar she is with their plans." Watch the student describe how she was approached »

He then opened a binder to a page that, according to Gallo-Chasanoff, had about eight questions on it.

"The top one was planned specifically for a college student," she added. " It said 'college student' in brackets and then the question."

—CNN

Online Sock Puppet Astroturfing

People on sites like Wikipedia use as many as hundreds of puppets to spam votes.

China's Government Bloggers

"China has formed a special force of undercover online commentators to try to sway public opinion on controversial issues on the Internet, a newspaper said on Thursday.

China has struggled to gain control over the Internet as more and more people gain access to obtain information beyond official sources. The country has nearly 100 million Internet users, according to official figures, and the figure is rising.

A special force of online commentators had already been operating in Suqian city in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu since April, the Southern Weekend said."

—China Hires Net Squad To Sway Public Opinion

Letter Writing Astroturfing

pentagon orders soldiers to commit pro-war astroturfing

Censorship

I have decided to come out and tell the public about what my company is doing because I believe it is unethical and wrong.

Several years ago we received a contract from an agency with the city of San Francisco. The purpose of this contract was to block the spread of any information which spreads a negative light on the city, or might adversely affect its burgeouning tourism industry or robust real estate market.

Members of the agency were concerned about community forums like Craigslist which are read by millions of people. Our job at Tomkins and Scott, my job specifically, was to monitor Craigslist and summarily flag all postings which reflected negatively upon the city in any way. I am going public with this because, after 3 years of being a censor for Craigslist, I believe what we are doing is totally wrong.

I can tell you that the agency of the city of San Francisco which contracted us is not the only government agency to be engaging in black PR operations. If you knew the full list of agencies hired by us and sister firms you would be absolutely shocked. If the average citizen understood the extent to which the information being presented to him or her is being filtered and skewed they would be up in arms immediately.

Information is power and the powers that be fully realize this, which is why they are willing to devote multi-million dollar budgets to covert campaigns like ours to distort and funnel public perceptions in ways that they consider appropriate. Nothing could be more fundamentally poisonous to a democratic society than the blocking of free and open exchange of information and ideas."

Known Astroturfing Companies

There are a number of PR companies that specialize in providing astroturfing services. Many of them are highly secretive due to the illegal and unethical nature of what they are paid to do.

Strategic Communication Laboratories

"Strategic Communication Laboratories, a small U.K. firm specializing in "influence operations" made a very public debut this week with a glitzy exhibit occupying prime real estate at Defense Systems & Equipment International, or DSEi, the United Kingdom's largest showcase for military technology. The main attraction was a full-scale mock-up of its ops center, running simulations ranging from natural disasters to political coups."

—Slate

Netvocates

Tomkins and Scott LLC