Craig Newmark's post on astroturfing and Nick Aster's follow-up post remind me of the famous New Yorker cartoon stating "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog."
But astroturfing is no joke and an unfortunate, unseemly reality in the public relations industry.
Several of my colleagues from around the globe have organized an Anti-Astroturfing movement to raise awareness of this practice in the hopes that we can eliminate it.
One thing going for the public relations industry is that the Internet, social media in particular, is a meritocracy. The loudest voices have earned their highly-networked megaphones and anything that looks the slightest bit fake is quickly unveiled as such.
There is a difference between legitimate, grass roots organizations, lobbying and astroturfing. Astroturfing lacks transparency and I'm pointing you to this site so you'll know that the public relations industry is intent on stopping it by shining a light on the offenders.
Related Stories: | Topics:Innovation, blogjam 2006, Craig Newmark |
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Recent Comments | 1 Total
August 15, 2006 at 7:58pm by Vanessa Horwell
For years, ordinary citizens have been swindled by PR, spin doctors and lobbyists. They have been “massaging the truth” to fulfill their clients’ demands. Distorting ugly realities and creating new ones, albeit false. And the reason? Money. Now, as we ordinary citizens have become somewhat wiser and less trusting of media; the spin and the deceit has become more complex, hiding behind falsely manufactured “citizen watch-groups”, “concerned environmentalists” and the like. As it gets easier for us to spot the difference between the truth, embellishment and out-and-out fabrication, so too will politicians, the government, corporations and of course PR firms, to come up with even greater ploys to become even less transparent.