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Astroturfing is carefully designed to appear as though it is the result of popular feeling, rather than manipulation. The astroturfing campaign attempts to gain legitimacy by affecting the appearance of having sprung forth spontaneously from "the people", whereas it is actually centrally coordinated and engineered by a small group. The planners hope that the public at large will believe that so many seemingly independent viewpoints could not have been faked.
The term is wordplay based on " grassroots" efforts, which are truly spontaneous undertakings. AstroTurf refers to the bright green artificial grass used in some indoor sports stadiums. A "grassroots" action or campaign is one that is started spontaneously and is largely sustained by private persons, not politicians, corporations, or public relations firms. A "grassroots" campaign is perceived to come from the popular feelings of some mass of people and to not be a creation of the powerful.
Examples of these kinds of practices can be found throughout history, though there is a perception that use of astroturfing is increasing in reaction to the declining credibility of politicians and corporations.
When such a campaign is exposed as meticulously crafted and manipulated by the same spin doctors that the public has learned to distrust, astroturfing adds to the very cynicism it was designed to circumvent. Of course, all political campaigns involve elites in some way or another; the line between grassroots and astroturfing can be quite fine, and can vary between observers.
One technique of an astroturfing campaign is to induce a number of supporters to write email, letters to the editor, blog posts, crossposts and trackbacks, in favor of the campaign's goals. The campaign typically instructs the supporters on what to say, how to say it, where to send it, and, above all, how to make it appear that their indignation, appreciation, joy, or hate is entirely spontaneous and independent – and thus "real" – and not at all the product of an orchestrated campaign. Sometimes, pre-written letters to the editor are distributed for submission to local newspapers, as their theoretically limited circulation makes it unlikely that anyone will notice the same letter appearing in many publications simultaneously, although with the advent of news consolidation services such as Google News, it has become much easier to spot such campaigns.
With the advent of the Internet, it has become easier to structure an astroturfing campaign, because the cost and effort to email (especially a pre-written, sign-your-name-at-the-bottom email) is so low. The pseudonymity of the Internet can be misused to enable one person to play the role of a whole group of like-minded people (see also sock puppetThis article describes sock puppets in general. For puppets in Wikipedia, see sock puppet. A sock puppet is a puppet made from a sock, placed over the puppeteer's hand. The sock puppeteer's hand fits into the closed end of the sock, with the thumb forming).
At the same time, the Internet makes it easier for people to compare notes, making it somewhat easier to expose an astroturfing campaign.
One such case was documented by the web log DailyKos on August 17, 2004 [1], when roughly 60 newspapers carried the following template letter text from the GeorgeWBush.com site [2], though they each appeared to be separate letters to the editor from different individuals.
Another case occurred during the Watergate scandalThe Watergate scandal (or just Watergate was an American political scandal and constitutional crisis of the 1970s, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. The affair was named after the hotel where the burglary that led to a se, when the New York Times took a survey of letters submitted to them regarding their opinion of the President's role in the crisis. The paper found the mail to be overwhelmingly in favor of NixonNixon is the surname of some prominent Americans: Richard Nixon 37th President of the United States Patricia Nixon First Lady to President Richard Nixon Cynthia Nixon actress Joan Lowery Nixon writer Dale Nixon pseudonym for guitarist Greg Ginn Mojo Nixon - however, at the order of G. Gordon LiddyGeorge Gordon Battle Liddy (born November 30, 1929) was the chief operative for President Richard Nixon's White House Plumbers unit that broke into the Watergate complex in 1972 and led to Nixon's resignation in 1974. Liddy later became an American radio of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, campaign money had been spent authoring and mailing letters to the Times, which accounted for up to ninety percent of the approving mail.