the.com/astroturfing
Fake grassroots, paid roots — a movement wearing a crowd costume.
means Creating a fake appearance of organic, widespread public support for something (a cause, product, or politician) when it's actually orchestrated and often paid for by a small group with an agenda.
from Coined by playing off 'grassroots' — genuine, bottom-up public support — and swapping in AstroTurf, the brand-name fake grass invented in the 1960s for sports stadiums. If grassroots is the real plant, astroturfing is the plastic imitation: it looks green from a distance, but nothing's actually growing. The term is usually credited to political use in the 1980s, when a U.S. senator used it to describe a flood of letters that looked like genuine constituent mail but were actually industry-organized.
- name origin
- named after AstroTurf, the fake grass brand
- tells
- identical phrasing posted by different accounts
- used by
- corporations, PR firms, and governments alike
- goal
- manufacture consensus before anyone checks the roots