Astroturfing

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term Astroturfing ( English derived from AstroTurf ; in German analogously artificial grass roots movement ) describes - especially in the USA - political public relations and commercial advertising projects that aim to give the impression of a spontaneous grass roots movement . The aim is to create the appearance of independent public expression of opinion about politicians, political groups, products, services, events and the like by centrally controlling the behavior of many different and geographically separated individuals.

Etymology and conceptual history

The term Astroturfing is an English word game with the brand name AstroTurf for artificial turf , as it is used in some sports stadiums. Grassroots ( grass roots movement ), however, refers to a really spontaneous, supported primarily by private initiative. The term was probably coined by longtime US Senator Lloyd Bentsen from Texas , who is said to have said in 1985, referring to numerous letters his office had received: “A Texan knows the difference between grass roots and Astroturf. It's all fabricated mail ”. This explanation also fits the fact that the Astrodome sports stadium in Bentsen's hometown Houston gave its name to the AstroTurf artificial turf used there .

Methods

Like most forms of propaganda , Astroturfing seeks to target the emotions of the public and to fake a strong public opinion with a certain direction. Most of the known cases of astroturfing come from politics.

The usual method is for a few people to pose as a large number of activists advocating a cause. They attract attention by, for example, writing letters to the editor and e-mails, writing blog entries, distributing cross- posts or setting trackbacks . They receive instructions from a central office about which opinions they should express when and where and how they can ensure that their indignation or recognition, their joy or their anger appears completely spontaneous and uninfluenced, so that the centrally controlled campaign gives the impression of real feelings and leaves concerns. Local newspapers often fall victim to astroturfing by publishing letters to the editor that have been sent to other newspapers with identical content.

The cost of astroturfing campaigns has dropped significantly thanks to the efficiency of the Internet and email. Software (“social bots”) is also increasingly being used, which makes it easier for individual activists to manage a large number of user accounts in blogs, Internet forums and social networks and to use them to generate apparent majorities of opinion.

Astroturfing can be described as adopting the methods of grassroots campaigning . Its actors do not pursue a bottom-up democratic approach, but rather have a top-down character through central coordination and financing , which they try to conceal. Based on grassroots campaigning, Astroturfing was also referred to as grassroots lobbying . Since clandestine lobbying such as Astroturfing lacks the legitimacy of grassroots movements, it is considered a problem when Astroturfing is identified as such:

“Once discovered, such actions almost always get negative press coverage. The media have an important control function when it comes to exposing bogus grassroots campaigns. The negative examples mentioned show that grassroots campaigning can only work for companies and trade associations if the cards are played with open cards from the start. The legitimacy of grassroots lobbying is only given if the source and financiers of communication activities are transparent. "

Examples

Germany

Examples of Astroturfing in Germany are the Federal Association of Landscape Protection and the Citizens for Technology in the Nuclear Industry.

In 2009, the civil rights organization Lobbycontrol announced that Deutsche Bahn had spent almost 1.3 million euros in 2007 on "covertly influencing the public": allegedly "independent" surveys raised the mood against the strikes of train drivers in 2007 and for the privatization of Deutsche Bahn created. In addition, forums and blogs such as Brigitte.de and Spiegel Online were massively infiltrated with rail-friendly posts. The German Council for Public Relations (DRPR) reprimanded the railway as well as the PR companies EPPA GmbH, Berlinpolis and Allendorf Media .

In a similar case, EPPA GmbH commissioned covert PR on the subject of biofuels , for which the Berlinpolis agency published alleged letters to the editor from Berlin citizens in the Junge Welt , the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , the Frankfurter Rundschau and on Focus Online .

In June 2010 the Free Democratic Party (FDP) was caught repeating FDP-friendly comments in the blog forum ruhrbarone.de . The DRPR thereupon issued a public warning in the direction of the federal office of the FDP, since this behavior "above all violated the transparency requirement for maintaining contacts in the political arena".

According to information from the ARD magazine Plusminus and Lobbycontrol , companies and associations in the lignite industry also use Astroturfing campaigns for their PR work. B. Close personal, organizational and content-related similarities with the independent citizens' initiative "Our area - Our future - An Rur and Erft", the German lignite industry association (DEBRIV) and the energy supply group RWE AG . The citizens' initiative, DEBRIV and the Ring Deutscher Bergingenieure shared the same mailbox ; also the internet site of the citizens' initiative is registered at the address of DEBRIV and the “district association Rheinische Braunkohle”. The Pro Lausitzer Braunkohle association , which contests man-made climate change, is an astroturfing organization that was financed by Vattenfall in order to create the mood for lignite mining as the "mouthpiece of an allegedly silent majority".

Companies like Deutsche Telekom also seem to have had customer reviews faked by a text agency in order to be able to simulate a lively customer debate about various products in their own shopping portal.

Switzerland

The Zurich-based company Poolside AG had early December 2012 recruited five students on behalf of the Advertising Agency Switzerland AG, which were paid over several weeks for in popular Swiss news portals under a series of false identities targeted mood against the Swiss popular initiative "against rip-off salaries" to do. The sock puppet campaign was discovered after a few weeks through research by the Tages-Anzeiger and then discontinued. Werbeanstalt Schweiz AG had previously been paid by the Swiss trade association Economiesuisse to carry out a poster campaign against the popular initiative, but the campaign manager of the trade association denied any connection. The popular initiative was finally adopted with a 67.9% yes vote.

Other countries

In 1993 the public relations agency Burson-Marsteller founded the astroturfing group National Smokers Alliance (NSA) to influence anti-smoking legislation in the interests of the tobacco industry. With financial support from Philip Morris USA , members were recruited for the NSA with aggressive methods, in addition to individuals, these were mainly restaurants. Although the NSA appeared to be a grassroots movement, it was a front line organization for the tobacco industry, as was later revealed.

In 2008, the Chinese human rights activist and journalism professor Xiao Qiang used internal government documents to explain virtual debates , such as state agencies in the People's Republic of China with specially trained Internet commentators, the 50 Cent Party (so named after the amount they are rumored to be paid for a post) manipulate.

In early 2009, during Operation Cast Lead, blogger Richard Silverstein forwarded a discussion guide from the Israeli Foreign Ministry for volunteers who were supposed to defend Israel's military offensive in Gaza on the Internet forums of international media. In August 2013, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office confirmed reports on a program to provide students with scholarships worth the equivalent of 583,000 euros, which, in return, would spread pro-Israeli posts on Facebook and Twitter .

In February 2012, a group calling itself the Russian arm of Anonymous published allegedly hacked email correspondence between the leadership of the youth organization Nashi and a network of bloggers and internet users. The activities described in them include payments for postings praising Vladimir Putin's policies , plans to purchase positive articles about Nashi’s annual summer camp in the Moskovsky Komsomolets , Komsomolskaya Pravda and Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspapers for more than ten million rubles , Manipulation of user ratings on YouTube , ideas for an online smear campaign against government critic Alexei Navalny and monitoring of LiveJournal entries by opposition politicians Navalny, Boris Nemtsov and Ilya Yashin . More revelations of this kind took place in 2014. According to the so-called Troll Army , which was then in St. Petersburg St district Olgino resided, by Yevgeny Prigoschin be funded and their activities in the wake of euromaidan , the Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and the war in eastern Ukraine on the editorial pages of Western Media have expanded. The authenticity of the material was confirmed to the Süddeutsche Zeitung by a managing director of the agency for analyzing the Internet . In 2015, the Russian newspapers Moi Rajon and Novaya Gazeta reported , citing internal documents and statements by a former employee, that the agency had over 400 employees who worked around the clock for a monthly wage of 40,000 rubles in twelve-hour shifts. One of the orders was to spread conspiracy theories for the murder of Boris Nemtsov. Former employees of the agency, whose headquarters are now at Savuschkina-Strasse 55 in Sankt Petersburg, reported in interviews that payment was made in cash and that there were no employment contracts, only confidentiality obligations.

A 2013 report by Freedom House found manipulation of online discussions by government-paid commentators in 22 of 60 countries surveyed, with these practices being used most heavily in the People's Republic of China, Bahrain and Russia.

In the wake of the global surveillance and espionage affair , the journalist Glenn Greenwald published documents from the fund of the whistleblower Edward Snowden in February 2014 , from which it should emerge that the secret services GCHQ and NSA are trying to manipulate and control online discourse. The presentation entitled The Art of Deception: Training for online Covert Operations (dt .: The Art of Deception: Training for undercover online operations ), by the GCHQ Working Group Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group is to originate (JTRIG), lists measures targeted discrediting of target persons or companies. In addition, tactics based on findings from the social sciences are described, with which Internet debates can be influenced and directed towards a desired goal.

In the run-up to the parliamentary elections in India in 2014 , both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress Party were accused of employing “political trolls” who create the mood for them on blogs and social media.

In 2015 the Ministry of Information of Ukraine set up an “information army” of volunteers to confront the Russian troll army.

Astroturfing campaigns are also used by the organized climate denial movement . Important examples are the campaigns of the front organizations Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks , both of which are financed by the Koch brothers ( Koch Industries ). They played an influential role in the formation of the tea party movement ; at the same time, they encouraged the tea party movement to focus their interests on global warming . Another Astroturf organization is Energy Citizens, which officially presents itself as a movement of tens of thousands of Americans, but which is actually backed by the American Petroleum Institute .

Even Microsoft already used Astroturfing. Numerous cases have become known in 2001 in which letters of support were forged or at least pre-formulated in the American anti-trust process, some of these letters even in the name of the deceased. In January 2011, student representatives at numerous German universities also received e-mails with identical content from an alleged student who was promoting the use of OneNote . However, these mails were not sent from a university address, but from a Microsoft IP subnet .

Movie

  • (Astro) Turf Wars (Australia 2010), documentary by Taki Oldham about astroturfing campaigns against Barack Obama

literature

  • Edward T. Walker: Grassroots for Hire. Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy . Cambridge / New York 2014, ISBN 978-1-107-02136-5 .
  • Sora Kim: Astroturfing. In: Robert L. Heath (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Public Relations. Volume 1, second edition. SAGE, Los Angeles 2013, ISBN 978-1-4522-4079-4 , p. 44.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Philip Gooden, Peter Lewis: Idiomantics. The Weird World of Popular Phrases . Bloomsbury, London 2013, ISBN 978-1-4081-5743-5 , p. 29.

    "A fellow from Texas can tell the difference between grass roots and Astroturf [...] this is generated mail."

  2. ↑ Detlef Grell: Security company designs tools for opinion making with fictional characters . In: heise online . February 20, 2011.
  3. ↑ Darlene Storm: Army of fake social media friends to promote propaganda ( memento of the original from February 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Computerworld. February 22, 2011.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / blogs.computerworld.com
  4. ↑ a b Kathrin Voss: Grassroots Campaigning and Opportunities through New Media ( Memento from April 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: The Parliament . No. 19, May 10, 2010.
  5. ↑ Claudia Peter: Citizens' initiatives controlled by industry? ("Wattenrat" - "Federal Association of Landscape Protection" addendum) . In: BUND.net , March 10, 2010, accessed October 8, 2011.
  6. ↑ Anna Irmisch: Astroturf. A new lobbying strategy in Germany? VS Research, Wiesbaden 2011, ISBN 978-3-531-18179-0 , p. 28 f.
  7. ↑ Philip Banse: Lobbyism well camouflaged. How companies covertly influence public opinion . In: Deutschlandfunk . November 22, 2008.
  8. ↑ Michael Bauchmüller: PR scandal at the railway - everyone is talking about the weather . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . May 29, 2009.
  9. ↑ Further details on the undercover PR work of the railway . In: Lobby Control . May 29, 2009.
  10. ↑ PR Council issues third reprimand in the rail scandal . In: Lobby Control . September 16, 2009.
  11. ^ Rudolf Stumberger : Contaminated Contents . In: Telepolis . September 21, 2009.
  12. ↑ Again undercover opinion-making - today: biofuel . In: lobbycontrol.de , July 10, 2009, accessed October 8, 2011.
  13. ↑ Peter Nowak : Greenwashing for biofuels revealed . In: Telepolis . July 14, 2009, accessed October 8, 2011.
  14. ↑ press release . In: drpr-online.de , July 26, 2010 (PDF; 76 kB)
  15. ↑ Mehrdad Amirkhizi: German PR Council warns FDP . In: horizon . July 26, 2010.
  16. ↑ Our area: the citizens' initiative and the lignite lobby . Lobby control website . Retrieved May 12, 2016.
  17. ↑ Video: Lobbyism - How Industry Uses Citizens' Initiatives ( Memento of the original from January 20, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Plusminus website . Retrieved May 12, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.daserste.de
  18. ↑ moratorium divided Coal Commission . In: Klimareporter . August 24, 2018. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
  19. ↑ Companies set up opaque citizens' initiatives - and the EU is helping to finance them . In: Wirtschaftswoche . February 28, 2018. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
  20. ↑ Markus Brauck: The critical mass . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 2010, p. 188-190 ( online ).
  21. ↑ Mario Stäuble: How opponents of the rip-off initiative manipulate the debate . In: Tages-Anzeiger . December 29, 2012.
  22. ↑ Sora Kim: Astroturfing. In: Robert L. Heath (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Public Relations: Volume 1. Second edition. SAGE, Los Angeles 2013, ISBN 978-1-4522-4079-4 , p. 44.
  23. ↑ Michael Bristow: China's internet "spin doctors" . In: BBC News . December 16, 2008.
  24. ^ Richard Silverstein: Hasbara spam alert . In: The Guardian . January 9, 2009.
  25. ↑ Facsimile (PDF; 89 kB) of the memorandum on Richard Silverstein's website
  26. ^ Ben Lynfield: Students offered grants if they tweet pro-Israeli propaganda . In: The Independent . August 13, 2013.
  27. ^ Jan-Peter Kleinhans: Propaganda 2.0: Tweeting for the scholarship in Israel . In: netzpolitik.org . 15th August 2013.
  28. ^ Daniel Estrin: Israel's government with a PR offensive: students as speakers . In: the daily newspaper . 19th of August 2013.
  29. ↑ Miriam Elder: Polishing Putin: hacked emails suggest dirty tricks by Russian youth group . In: The Guardian . February 7, 2012.
  30. ↑ Miriam Elder: Emails give insight into Kremlin youth group's priorities, means and concerns . In: The Guardian . February 7, 2012.
  31. ↑ Miriam Elder: Hacked emails allege Russian youth group Nashi paying bloggers . In: The Guardian . February 7, 2012.
  32. ↑ Miriam Elder: Where the Ruble Rolls . In: Friday . February 8, 2012.
  33. ^ Max Seddon: Documents Show How Russia's Troll Army Hit America . In: BuzzFeed . 2nd June 2014.
  34. ^ Julian Hans: Putin's trolls . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . June 13, 2014.
  35. ^ Felix-Emeric Tota: Russian state trolls: Twelve hours a day in Putin's sense . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . 19th March 2015.
  36. ↑ Shaun Walker: Salutin 'Putin: inside a Russian troll house . In: The Guardian . 2nd April 2015.
  37. ↑ Benjamin Bidder: Russian troll fighter: "Dragging these horrors to the public" . In: Spiegel Online . May 29, 2015.
  38. ^ Adrian Chen: The Agency . In: The New York Times Magazine . 2nd June 2015.
  39. ^ Sanja Kelly, Mai Truong, Madeline Earp, Laura Reed, Adrian Shahbaz, Ashley Greco-Stone: Freedom on the Net 2013: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media . October 3, 2013 (PDF; 105 KB)
  40. ^ Glenn Greenwald: How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations . In: The Intercept . February 24, 2014.
  41. ^ Martin Holland: NSA scandal: manipulate secret services and discredit on the net . In: heise online . February 25, 2014.
  42. ↑ Markus Böhm: Snowden documents: British secret service planned character assassination campaigns on the Internet . In: Spiegel Online . February 25, 2014.
  43. ↑ Pavel Lokshin: secret GCHQ: monitoring and getting them ready . In: The time . February 25, 2014.
  44. ^ Maeve Shearlaw: From Britain to Beijing: How governments manipulate the internet . In: The Guardian . 2nd April 2015.
  45. ↑ Yana Lyushnevskaya: Ukraine's new online media army in war with Russia . In: BBC . March 3, 2015.
  46. ^ Riley E. Dunlap, Aaron M. McCright: Organized Climate Change Denial. In: John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, David Schlosberg (Eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society. Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 144-160, esp. 154.
  47. ↑ Microsoft funded “grass roots” campaign . In: USA Today . August 23, 2001. See Thor Olavsrud: Microsoft Supported by Dead People . In: internetnews.com , August 23, 2001.
  48. ↑ Linus Neumann: Suspicion of Microsoft Astroturfing at German universities . In: netzpolitik.org . January 24, 2011.