Astroturfing in Political Wars
As noted in the Washington Post last week, the presidential campaign of John McCain has rolled out a new program designed to reward supporters for placing the campaign’s official “Talking Points” in the Comments sections of various blogs.
I don’t have a problem with the concept of spurring supporters to be active in the blogosphere. The more the merrier!
I don’t have a problem with a campaign pointing subscribers to some of the most influential blogs, either. That’s just PR 101, and, it’s being done in the open.
I don’t even have a problem with the McCain campaign’s willingness to offer “reward points” for active blog participants. I think it’s kind of sad and lame, and treads a fine ethical line – but okay, try it.
But I do think that we should all be concerned by a campaign that actively supplies its supporters with official “Talking Points” and cynically disregards any talk of disclosure.
When you add-up the lack of disclosure + reward points + proactive targeting, it doesn’t take long to wonder where this is headed, and to be troubled by the trends.
Here’s the Wikipedia definition of Astroturfing:
“…Formal public relations campaigns in politics and advertising which seek to create the impression of being spontaneous ‘grassroots’ behavior … The goal of such a campaign is to disguise the efforts of a political or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity — a politician, political group, product, service or event. Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt (‘outreach’, ‘awareness’, etc.) and covert (disinformation) means.”
Imagine the scenario: a McCain supporter reads an independent blog post about the candidates’ plans for the U.S. Economy. They then zip over to the McCain site to copy & paste the “official talking points” into the independent blog’s Comment section. But they don’t disclose that they are a McCain supporter (though it’s probably obvious). They don’t use their real name; they’re using their online “handle,” and for all anyone else knows they’re an active campaign worker.
Most egregiously, of course, they don’t disclose that their words are direct quotations from the McCain website. They are parroting the words: they are “disguising the efforts of a political entity as an independent (and ‘apparently diverse and geographically distributed’) public reaction.”
It could get worse. Imagine further that some sloppy mainstream reporter is on deadline for yet-another of their never-ending articles about the 2008 election. Harried by their managing editor, they pluck the McCain supporter’s online comments to add color to their article, implying that these are “direct quotes” from blog readers. Doing the McCain campaign’s rallying job for them.
Meanwhile, the McCain supporter wins McPoints for their deception. Yay! A free bumper sticker!
What fun would it be if the Comments section of the nation’s most popular political blogs merely became dueling versions of each campaign’s official talking points?
Mashable’s Mark Hopkins totally mangled this story when he suggested that the left-wing of the blogosphere would be disingenuous to object to these tactics. Hopkins believes that the Democrats are upset because “McCain is providing a rewards system for those interested in promoting his message, whereas the Obama campaign tries to (get) folks involved in spreading the message based on idealism … Sure, none of (the Democratic social media) campaigns explicitly incentivized their campaign messages, but they encouraged users to go forth into the blogosphere and spread the word. What is the McCain campaign really doing here?”
What the McCain campaign is really doing here is asking people to lie. What they are doing is trying to dupe us. What they are doing is using innocent pawns to covertly spread their official talking points.
Let the McCainiacs rack-up as many points as they want. If that’s the motivation that Republican supporters need to get involved, they can have their free schwag. (After all, Obama’s campaign is not above offering incentives, either: they often reward active supporters with “lunch with the candidate,” etc.) The issue is the lack of disclosure, plain and simple.
When a campaign that’s running for the highest elected public office in the U.S.A. says, “Go to these blogs, use these messages, and don’t bother telling anyone where the messages came from,” then we have reason to wonder how these same campaigners will operate once they’re in power.
Update: A Twitter debate with @MelWebster raised this important distinction: Mel noted that when he was a reporter, he and his colleagues saw similar tactics employed in faux Letters to the Editor, i.e., the letters were written by the campaigns for their supporters to sign and mail. As Mel noted, these tactics were pretty transparent to the experienced reporters (“We would toss them”)…
And that’s a perfect opportunity to expand my point. Reporters glean the plot but typical blog readers more often will not: that's the big lie. The blogs’ readers become victims of the astroturf campaign. Instead of listening to “Someone like me,” the blog readers are being fooled by someone like them, using someone else’s words.
Disclosure: I am for Obama in this year’s election. But if the Obama campaign’s own Social Media efforts devolve into astroturfing, I’ll actively denounce it here. (Also, on most days I “heart” Mashable.)
UPDATE 2: All’s fair I guess?
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Comments
Excellent post. I'm going to circulate this to friends in the middle of the fray as an excellent summary on the topic of Astroturfing 2.0
Posted by: Mike Chapman | August 11, 2008 02:54 PM
Wait a minute...isn't this how the Bush Administration sold the war in Iraq? Providing information from dubious sources with the media in support of the WMD and Al-Qaeda arguments, and then citing the very stories they planted without disclosing the those sources as proof of their credibility?
I fear that we have created a new and cynical model for "transparency" in how the political power structure communicates with the masses. George Orwell would be impressed.
Posted by: Michael Boss | August 11, 2008 03:04 PM
Good post, Todd, and you are right on pointing this out. Thanks for taking the time to do it. McCain's strategy is off on this front, and as the word gets out about methodology, he may find his campaign tainted.
Geoff
P.S. Hope you kick my butt this week. Good luck.
Posted by: Geoff Livingston | August 11, 2008 03:51 PM
Thanks Todd.
Just so all your readers are aware, the above activity would be classified as illegal in UK now.
http://www.ipa.co.uk/Content/Buzz-marketing-techniques-illegal-from-May-warns-IPA-
I state this here because thankfully we (the UK) have a tradition of advertising legislation which aims to protect the public, and maintains form, and standards... I do hope the USA follows in this emerging field too. > >
Posted by: Social Media Mafia | August 11, 2008 04:07 PM
I think you know that it takes a lot to get me to comment on a blog these days, but what's going on "tactically" on the internet lately is seriously disturbing me. What really disturbs me, is that people are following directions like this, like sheep. I feel like I need to vlog my mom saying "People, if your friends jumped off the brooklyn bridge, would you follow?" and loop it for round the clock viewing.
WE ALL NEED TO USE OUR HEADS MORE. Think independently. Please.
Astroturfing, which is illegal in the UK, is not ok. Brandjacking on social networks like twitter, also not ok.
The most critical entry to the web, IMO, is being able to trust other members of the community. Shady tactics like this are making it harder and harder to trust.
Maybe we need to do a better job of educating newbies (and some seasoned vets)? I'm not sure what the answer is, but I am certain something needs to be done to help us all collectively raise the bar.
Posted by: annie Heckenberger | August 11, 2008 04:11 PM
It is not in the least ironic that both the term and the practice astroturfing originated in the political sphere, and only recently has the term "grassroots" been used outside of politics. As Wikipedia and other sources note, it was first used by Senator Lloyd Bentsen in 1985.
Posted by: Joel | August 11, 2008 04:23 PM
furthermore, are humans the new bot?!? seriously.
Posted by: annie Heckenberger | August 11, 2008 04:44 PM
Todd-
This is a great post, and timely. Thanks for bringing this to everyone's attention.
Posted by: Lacy Kemp | August 11, 2008 04:48 PM
Is this the same program that's been around for a while, or is this a new one? We talked about some of these efforts back in June on Media Bullseye Radio Roundtable (on June 12, Aaron Brazell was the guest that week), after it was reported in Wired magazine.
If it's a new program, they obviously didn't learn much from the backlash that occurred then. If it's the same program, I'm curious as to what the participation rate has been...are people actually doing this? The Wired piece http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/there-probably.html
seemed to indicate that it was out there, but no one was biting.
Jen
Posted by: Jen Zingsheim | August 11, 2008 05:39 PM
Thank you, Todd. Through a bad Mashable article comes awareness of a great blog to which I will now be subscribing.
Absolutely fantastic post.
Posted by: ProfessionalGun | August 11, 2008 06:00 PM
The biggest difference between astroturfing and censorship: astroturfing is a PR term and censorship is a political term. Astroturfing is a PR tactic which can be used for either political or commercial ends; censorship is always used for political ends. Using censorship with reference to China is a politically charged term because many critics of Chinese government policy like to use it to satisfy their own political agendas.
----------------------
Angelinjones
Utah Treatment Centers
Posted by: angelinjones | August 12, 2008 05:00 AM
I'm glad you wrote about this, Todd. What amazed me is that the supposedly clued-in online team isn't aware (or doesn't care) that a backlash against astroturfing already exists. You have to wonder if they at least googled the word to see what kind of sentiment is already in play. They might have found this...
http://tinyurl.com/h9jj5
...and changed their minds.
Posted by: Shel Holtz | August 12, 2008 12:39 PM
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but I don't see anywhere in the McCain web page where it suggests that people should cut and paste from talking points into the comments on political blogs. It asks people to get active on the specified blogs, provides background information, and tracks what people report they have done to influence online discussion.
The "astroturfing" you mention is certainly something that could occur, but I don't see where the McCain campaign is encouraging it -- nor any evidence in this post that it has happened even without the campaign's intent.
Let's be careful about condemning the campaign for providing talking points. I can't believe that you and most of the folks who have commented here haven't provided talking points to clients before. Educating supporters or clients about timely topics isn't nefarious at all.
Fake comments would certainly not be a good thing, but to suggest that the campaign is aiming for the behavior just isn't supported based on what I can see.
Posted by: Chip Griffin | August 13, 2008 02:47 PM
@Chip - We provide "talking points" in order that they be used. Just because you don't see an explicit request to "please cut & paste" does not mean that it is not strongly implied.
Anyway, that's what the WaPo reporter extrapolated in their article, and I place that paper pretty high in the Integrity dept.
We can agree to disagree, though.
Posted by: Todd Defren | August 13, 2008 02:57 PM
@Todd - I, too, respect the Washington Post. But their article contains no evidence of the campaign's purported desire to see things "cut and paste." Nor does it include even one example of a verbatim copying of the talking points. To say it is "implied" seems to me to be a stretch.
As for talking points, of course they are created to be used. But if you provide a client with talking points prior to an interview, do you expect them to say that their PR firm suggested a particular line? In the political world at least -- where I came from -- talking points are designed to provide general guidance to bosses, clients, and supporters, not verbatim messages. If they were listed as "ghost written comments" or something like that, I think the implication might be clear, but not with a label of "talking points."
It just doesn't seem wrong to me that a supporter be asked to go to blogs to share their own views, informed by the campaign's information. (I don't happen to see the point in going to hardcore opposition sites like DailyKos, mind you, but that's a separate discussion.)
Finally, I agree we can agree to disagree. (A lot of agrees in that statement, in fact!)
Posted by: Chip Griffin | August 13, 2008 03:09 PM
Umm, your "Imagine further..." scenario already happens every day, and it happened way back when people thought "blogs" were swamps from which monsters crawled in sub-par horror movies. It's called cable news.
The harried day-time producer at MSNBC books Campaign A's talking head to parrot her assigned talking points of the day, allows Campaign B's representative to do the same, and then the next 90 seconds are spent with two people blathering at the top of their lungs as if the lapel mic were the extent of their audience.
Additionally, even if this is a stupid idea (and I am more likely to agree that it's stupid than I am to say it's *wrong*), it's done in the open. Stupidity gets called out; smart folks move on.
If someone gets duped, well, I believe in social Darwinism: survival of the fittest. If a hyperbolic, written-by-committee, cut-and-paste blog comment sways your vote, you ain't the "fittest." (I don't mean "you" as in "Todd" but "you" as in just "someone.")
Posted by: Mike Keliher | August 13, 2008 11:22 PM
I didn't suggest that it'd be disingenuous for the left to object to these tactics, I said that it'd be disingenuous for the left to object to these tactics when they pioneered engaging in these tactics.
You should investigate Obama's grassroots campaign online - and I look forward to your upcoming denouncement of these tactics.
Posted by: Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins | August 16, 2008 09:59 PM
Mark, if you can share a link related to your concerns re: the Obama campaign, I'l happily check it out, and denounce it if it is warranted.
Like you, writing about politics is a rarity for me, particularly on this blog, so I don't have the time or need to dig deep into the issues.
Thanks for stopping by, by the way, and for your recent writings re: the PR trade.
Posted by: Todd Defren | August 16, 2008 10:12 PM