Archive for October, 2006
Guest blogger: Paull Young.
Paull is known for creating Australia’s first student PR blog, Young PR, and has been heavily involved at Forward — an online springboard for new and upcoming PR professionals. Paull started the Anti Astroturfing Campaign together with Trevor Cook of Corporate Engagement in July this year.
What is Astroturfing?
Astroturfing is the practice of creating fake entities that appear to be real grassroots organizations, when in fact they are the work of people or groups with hidden motives and identities.
Astroturfing is a deceptive and deceitful practice – and while it is often blamed on public relations, it is really only carried out by unethical individuals who lack the savvy and intelligence to persuade people with an honest argument.
Leading Australian PR blogger Trevor Cook and I started the anti-astroturfing campaign to tackle the issue. We aimed to lead a debate on the issue amongst PR bloggers and encourage PR practitioners, professional associations and big PR agencies to confront and oppose the practice. If you’re new to the topic – visit the anti-astroturfing campaign to view a huge collection of resources focusing on the topic.
How is astroturfing used in politics?
Astroturfing is used for political purposes more than any other. This is because a real grassroots organization is an extremely powerful political entity. If people care enough about an issue to organize around it, it will hold great political power.
It is incredibly difficult to create a real grassroots organization. A large number of people need to passionately care about an issue to organize around it, and even if there are large numbers of people who believe in a certain issue – this does not mean that they will necessarily organize around it.
As a result, unethical operators will (on occasion) try to create an illusion of real grassroots support in order to influence people through deception. It is much easier to create a fake organization and try to make it look real then to help nurture and give voice to real opinions from real people.
So while the building of grassroots support for an issue is a valuable communication tactic – helping give voice to real opinions held by real people. The creation of Astroturf groups – putting forward fake opinions or using fake people to promote a cause with hidden motives – is not.
Astroturfing and online communication
New online tools make astroturfing much easier to carry out, but they also make it much more difficult to get away with.
In an environment where anyone can create an authentic looking website, blog, podcast or vlog; it is extremely easy for astroturfing groups to create a seemingly authentic fake organization. It is easy to hide your identity or put forward your point of view with anonymity; and the ease of creating fake people or putting forward false viewpoints is attractive to unethical operators attempting to promote an unpopular cause.
However, the nature of the blogosphere means that astroturf operations are often gleefully uncovered – much to the chagrin of the scoundrels hiding behind them. Blogs are successful because of their authentic voice and passionate ideas held by real people. Anything that doesn’t ring true or appear authentic will be investigated and uncovered. There is an army of bloggers out there who understand that astroturfing undermines everything they believe in – and they won’t be backwards in attacking fakes in their neighbourhood.
An Example: The Infamous Al Gore YouTube video
My points above are demonstrated by the well known ‘March of the Penguin Army’ episode.
A video was posted on YouTube (apparently made by a real, concerned individual acting on his own beliefs) that was highly critical of Al Gore’s views on climate change. This eventually caught the attention of a Wall Street Journal reporter, who noticed that the video was advertised on Google. Why would a supposedly amateur video have advertisements?
The industrious Post reporter contacted the individual who posted the video. They claimed to be a college student and refused an interview. The reporter then dug a little deeper and found that the ‘college student’s’ email address stemmed from Washington PR firm DCI Group. And one of DCI Groups major clients? Exxon – who have a vested interest in opposing climate change.
This led to a blog storm and you can read all the coverage on this page at the anti-astroturfing campaign.
This example shows just how easy it is to kick off an astroturfing campaign online – but it also shows how easy it is to get caught, and the justifiable anger and disgust that results.
For more information on astroturfing, spend some time investigating the many resources available at the anti-astroturfing campaign page.
After reading this article in the Halifax’s Chronicle Herald, I’m pretty certain Garth Turner knows what’s going on. The Independent MP in the Halton region of Ontario is changing the way Canadians do politics. His interactive website and blog are making it easy for constituents to get in touch with him and discuss his policies. It seems to be working and, as the article’s author says, “political blogging can’t be put back in the bottle.”
The latest tactical move by left wing bloggers in the US election campaign is called ‘Google Bombing‘.
The campaign, outlined by Chris Bowers of MyDD last week, aims to utilize ‘Google Adwords and simultaneous, widespread embedded hyperlinks in order to drive as many voters as possible toward the most damning, non-partisan article written on the Republican candidate in seventy key US Senate and House races.
As a study by Pew Internet and American Life Project demonstrates, the number one way voters use the Internet for political action is to search for candidate information. Bowers anticipates that if a negative article about a candidate appears both high on all Google searches and as an advertisement whenever anyone search for the candidate, this will increase the likelihood that the article will be seen and trusted by those searching for the information.
According to an article by Heather Greenfield, in MSNBC.com, the campaign has been picked up by right wing bloggers who urge their ilk to use a ‘fight fire with fire’ strategy. However, there are concerns among the right wing bloggers that the Google Bombing-campaign might only work for Democrats writes Greenfield.
The form of campaigning has met mixed critiques according to MSNBC.com. It is seen as both a clever and cost-effective way to campaign. However, online strategists such as Mike Connell of Connell Donatelli Inc., said to MSNBC.com that the Google Bombing-campaign might have been sparked too late to work in time for the election.
Google is definitely not thrilled by the idea.
This is a very interesting way of running a campaign and we will hopefully hear more about its effect after the November election.
The history of ‘Political Google Bombing’
The Bivings Report on Political Google Bombs
A New Campaign Tactic: Manipulating Google Data – The New York Times
Other campaigns in the US Election: Use it or lose it
Update:
Follow the developments in the Google Bombing Campaign at MyDD
As our first guest writer, Olaf from The Prairie Wrangler blog writes about political blogging in Canada…
“I would describe Canadian political blogging as a massive ocean, fully saturated with fish and containing three clearly discernable whirlpools. Now, I’m not much of a poet, as you will soon find out, so try to bear with me on this analogy.
There’s a left wing pool, a centrist pool, and a right wing pool that all connect at their edges. A vast majority of bloggers swim towards the pool they find most comfortable, and often get sucked down into the depths of that dark void, never to return again, and never to see beyond it.
They become more and more confident that their pool is superior as they sink deeper and deeper, and convene only with the like-minded. Together, all arrogantly smirk at those who have, through moral deviancy or intellectual dishonesty, chose a pool different from their own. They no longer need to swim; they merely rest near the bottom of their pool, drinking the party “kool-aid”, chatting amongst themselves, and going around in circles.
Then there are some swimmers who gravitate to the area between the three pools. These are the strongest swimmers, and must constantly fight the whirlpools of their ideological home, however comfortable it may be, and must constantly swim towards the outer edge. They are able to converse with the other pools without derision, and make arguments by challenging their arguments, with an underlying respect, instead of contempt. It is these bloggers who prevent the blogosphere from degenerating completely into tri-polar, mutually exclusive pools. They are able to contribute constructively to political discourse, because they have to keep swimming to stay where they are.
Although there are quite a few edge-swimmers from each whirlpool, in my opinion, the top two from each are:
Right-wing swimmers:
Andrew at BoundByGravity
Greg at Political Staples
Centrist swimmers:
Bart at Calgary Grit
Peter at Paper Dynamite
Left-wing swimmers:
The Idealistic Pragmatist
John at Dymaxion World”
Thanks, Olaf!
We will be looking for more people to write guest articles in the future, so if you are interested send us an e-mail.
I found this paper on weblogs role in political campaigns by some help from a Norwegian based blogger today. Haven’t had time to read it yet, but I will. The paper was presented at BlogTalkReloaded in Vienna, Austria this month and aims to estimate the potential of weblogs as a campaigning instrument.
According to the authors the paper present some answers to the question of whether campaigning via weblogs can be a success.
Steve Johnson said in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune that blogs are about to become “mainstream”. Recent numbers from the Pew Institute show that only 8 percent (12 million American adults) of U.S. Internet users operate a blog and a significantly higher number aren’t entirely sure what the term “web blog” means.
However, we are (according to David Sifry – founder of Technorati) seeing a growth of 175,000 blogs every single day – about two every second of every day – opposed to a growth of one every second seven months ago.
57 million American adults (39 percent) read blogs on a daily basis, 72 percent of all bloggers looks online for news or information about politics. Technorati have listed 57 million blogs on their site. Surely these numbers must indicate a significant impact on the political sphere and the way we visualise political campaigns. The question we still have to dig deeper for is how blogs can have impact on political campaigns.
News link:
Europe’s Politicians Embrace Web 2.0
Today’s boingboing has a link to a fabulous concept site, Outside.in. I feel that by saying this is a location-based information-collector (based on certain neighbourhoods) I am not giving them enough credit. Take a look at their site for yourself and see what a great concept they have come up with. Afterwards, think about how this kind of system could be used for political purposes. I feel that it will make it much easier for interested voters to find out about issues in their area and how the different candidates relate to this issues. Outside.in looks like it will work much better than a simple search engine or list of links for these kinds of purposes, and I look forward to following their progress.
The Hansard Society recently released a report looking at how new information and communications technologies can provide a stronger voice for marginalised groups and communities. The report looks at how the ICT technologies can make the democratic system function more effectively and how the role and effect of blogs can help community based campaigns receive recognition and visibility.
The report is added to our list of academic books and articles focusing on the effect of blogging in political campaigns. Help us make the list more comprehensive by posting a comment on our academic research page.
From the home of the Calgary Flames comes a blog that reminds us once again that it is not the politicians or marketing machines who rule the blogwaves, but rather the do-it-yourselfers. CalgaryGrit’s political analysis is amateur in the best sense of the word. It shows the ability of blogs to showcase an opinion without having to pander to corporate or editorial ideologies as journalists in the past have had to. Although CalgaryGrit has an admittedly liberal slant to it, its conversational style realizes the dream of the blogosphere as a political realm for the everyman.
Speaking of fickle trends, someone recently pointed out an article about how the virtual worlds in online roleplaying games are reaping real world profits for some of their slightly more shrewd players. Even recording artists are holding concerts here, and fashion designers are selling virtual versions of their garments. Now, as politicians begin to embrace the blogsophere, I begin to wonder how long it will be before a candidate steps onto a soapbox in one of these in-game worlds to give a speech. With a growing user base at least as devoted as the bloggers, do these online worlds have the potential to become venues in the political sphere?
