Business-Managed Environment

Astroturf - Social Media

Public relations firms also utilise social media in their campaigns. A single person or computer can post hundreds of comments on articles, blogs, Facebook, MySpace, Buzz, Twitter and YouTube, so they seem to be made by many people. In this way trends are created, support or opposition for products, people and causes are manufactured and perceptions of public opinion are manipulated.

Such methods are used by retailers, corporations, government departments, conservative think tanks, and even the military. The fake identities have been called sockpuppets and they do not disclose the interests they represent but purport to be an independent member of the community.

For example, the American Petroleum Institute (API), in conjunction with a Nebraskan Senator's office, created fake Twitter accounts in order to promote a tar sands pipeline.

People may be enrolled in such astroturf efforts as these advertisements show:

Greetings. On this project we need providers that have large popular and authentic accounts on Twitter and Facebook, ability to get attention, spread buzz and divulge rumours quickly, many followers and friends who follow their posts with trust, and what we will pay for is an astroturfing grassroots campaign of criticism on Twitter and Facebook against a given large company that is misbehaving against ours.

Reference: 'Agency boss: We're targeting blogs with fake personas but it's not spam', mUmBRELLA, 30 August 2009.

The job requires you to have very good search skills and to find conversations online. You'll then take on a supplied persona and join in on the conversation. You'll have to be very clever and adaptive and if you don't know about a subject, then you'll have to learn how to sell yourself as authentic.

Although these advertisements are for people, computer programmes can also create online personas, complete with backgrounds and histories:

Persona management: it's the construction of a program that allows what they've termed an operator. The operator has the ability from their computer screen to control multiple online profiles or personas. And from their one screen they can then get those particular people to engage in a conversation with each other; to engage in a conversation with real and legitimate people; and to undertake activities online that to the naked eye would look like a series or a number of people participating in an online conversation. A lot of detail and effort goes into ensuring that the personas look as real as any online person does; that would go as far as making sure that they have a digital footprint, which is essentially your history online.

One person who offers software to create online personas goes by the name of SharePro who runs a website named ES5.com: Penetrating Online Established Communities and demonstrates his software in YouTube (example). He says the software is easy to create and similar software is used widely on the internet. He claims that "software can take over online discussions and change their agenda without anyone in the online community noticing that their conversations are being manipulated".

Business-Managed Democracy

Business-Managed Environment

Astroturf - Social Media

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