PICOTECHNOLOGY will prevent bird flu, cure cancer and preserve national security, or so you read in the paper. A letter in a different newspaper puts the same argument, signed by an association of citizens concerned about epidemics. Then another鈥�
It looks like a groundswell of support for the next big thing, but have you been astroturfed? What seems at a glance to be a grass-roots campaign may sometimes be a fake: just as what at first sight looks like grass in a sports stadium may turn out to be AstroTurf, a woven polymer substitute.
鈥淚t looks like a groundswell of support for the next big thing鈥�
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Classic astroturfing is the practice of disguising an orchestrated campaign as a spontaneous upwelling of public opinion. Some say the pharmaceutical industry鈥檚 funding of patient support groups in the US comes perilously close to this (麻豆传媒, 27 October 2006, p 18). These groups offer patients information about available treatments and campaign for them to be paid for by publicly funded health insurance programmes. Pharmaceutical companies would clearly have much to gain by filtering their marketing messages through such organisations.
So where else might the verdant grass roots warrant a closer look? Take the effort that some oil and coal corporations have put into spreading 鈥渞easonable doubt鈥� about the effects of climate change. The Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy in Maryland, for example, has issued a number of reports about climate change. It may sound like an independent source but the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists names it among dozens of groups funded by oil company Exxon (麻豆传媒, 13 January, p 14).
Astroturfing first gained widespread notoriety in 2001 in a quite different field, with a spate of letters and opinion pieces in newspapers decrying a lawsuit against Microsoft. It turned out these were coordinated by 鈥淎mericans for Technology Leadership鈥�, a group sponsored by Microsoft. The term itself appears to have been coined in 1985 by then Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, who noted that the mountains of letters he received about legislation on insurance originated with insurers.
The spirit has even older roots, including the 鈥渟pontaneous workers鈥� protests鈥� of the Soviet Union. That in turn has begotten 鈥渞everse astroturfing鈥� 鈥� an attempt to make a legitimate grass-roots protest seem fake. One example occurred when The Sunday Times newspaper in London reported claims that anti-capitalist protesters in the City of London on 18 June 1999 had been paid 拢30 and given sandwiches, an allegation that the protesters vehemently denied. Subversives adopted 鈥渨here鈥檚 my sandwich?鈥� as a password.
Technologies such as the internet have made astroturfing easier to carry out 鈥� but also make it easier to look up who is alleged to be paying whom. For example, The Center for Media and Democracy, a non-profit organisation based in Madison, Wisconsin, investigates public relations spin and propaganda and publishes its work at .