I have just been watching a TED talk given in February 2015 by the acclaimed author and TV host Sharyl Attkisson, titled, “Astroturf and manipulation of media messages.” It’s only 10 minutes long, and I would invite readers to watch it and draw their own conclusions.
The following excerpts are some of the highlights from Sharyl Attkisson’s scintillating speech.
What is Astroturf? It’s a perversion of grass roots – as in fake grass roots. Astroturf is when political, corporate or other special interests disguise themselves, and publish blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts, and publish ads, letters to the editor, or simply publish comments online, to try to fool you into thinking that an independent or grassroots movement is speaking. The whole point of Astroturf is to try to give the impression that there’s widespread support for or against an agenda, when there’s not. Astroturf seeks to manipulate you into changing your opinion, by making you feel as if you are an outlier, when you’re not.
One example is the Washington Redskins’ name. Without taking a position on the controversy, if you simply were looking at news media coverage over the course of the past year, or looking at social media, you’d probably have to conclude that most Americans find that name offensive and think it ought to be changed. But what if I told you 71% of Americans say the name should not be changed? That’s more than two-thirds.
Astroturfers seek to controversialize those who disagree with them. They attack news organizations that publish stories that they don’t like, whistleblowers that tell the truth, politicians that dare to ask the tough questions, and journalists who have the audacity to report on all of it. Sometimes Astroturfers simply shove, intentionally, so much confusing and conflicting information into the mix that you’re left to throw up your hands and disregard all of it, including the truth…
And then there’s Wikipedia: Astroturfers’ dream come true, billed as the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The reality can’t be more different. Anonymous Wikipedia editors control and co-opt pages on behalf of special interests. They forbid and reverse edits that go againt their agenda. They skew and delete information in blatant violation of Wikipedia’s own established with impunity, always superior to the poor schleps who actually believe anyone could edit Wikipedia, only to discover they’re barred from correcting even the simplest factual inaccuracies. Try adding a footnoted fact or correcting a fact error on one of these monitored Wikipedia pages and “Poof!” Sometimes, within a matter of seconds, you’ll find that your edit is reversed…
So now you may be thinking, “What can I do? I thought I’d done my research. What chance do I have of separating fact from fiction – especially if seasoned journalists, with years of experience, can be so easily fooled?” Well, I have a few strategies that I can tell you about, to help you recognize signs of propaganda and Astroturf. Once you start to know what to look for, you’ll begin to recognize it everywhere. First, hallmarks of Astroturf include use of inflammatory language, such as “crank,” “quack,” “nutty,” “lies,” “paranoid,” “pseudo” and “conspiracy.” Astroturfers often claim to debunk myths that aren’t myths at all. Use of the charged language tests well: people hear something’s a myth, maybe they find it on Snopes, and they instantly declare themselves too smart to fall for it. But what if the whole notion of a myth is itself a myth, and you and Snopes fell for that? Beware when interests attack an issue by controversializing or attacking the people, personalities and organizations surrounding it, rather than addressing the facts. That could be Astroturf.
And most of all: Astroturfers tend to reserve all of their public skepticism for those exposing wrongdoing, rather than the wrongdoers. In other words, instead of questioning authority, they question those who question authority.
You might start to see things a little more clearly. It’s kind of like taking off your glasses and wiping them and putting them back on, and realizing for the first time how foggy they’ve been all along. I can’t resolve these issues but hopefully, I’ve given you some information that will at least motivate you to take off your glasses and wipe them, and become a wiser consumer of information in an increasingly artificial, paid-for reality. Thank you.
Some questions for readers to ponder:
(i) can you think of any online journals or Websites, whose content is largely or entirely made up of Astroturf?
(ii) which news Websites do you place the most trust in, and why?
(iii) what are some particularly outrageous incidents of Astroturfing that you’ve witnessed during the past year or so?
Over to you.
If it’s over to me, here, read this:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/30/donald-trump-george-monbiot-misinformation?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
http://www.ideacenter.org/
I stopped listening when she linked vaccines to autism.
TEDx talks are often worth less than navel fluff
Evolution News and Views;
Uncommon Descent.
Sorry, Neil. Not even close. Consider the following:
Doesn’t sound like ENV or UD to me. Sounds more like Factcheck.org, Yahoo news, or the Huffington Post.
hallmarks of crackpots include claiming their critics will dismiss them as crackpots
reminds me of the bible
Dazz,
You write:
Not so fast. Sharyl Attkisson was with CBS News for 21 years, so she’s obviously no slouch. Maybe you should open your mind a little, and have a look at the following article by Attkisson, titled, “What the News Isn’t Saying About Vaccine-Autism Studies”:
https://sharylattkisson.com/what-the-news-isnt-saying-about-vaccine-autism-studies/
She writes:
Until this evening, I would have agreed with you that the vaccine-autism link was a total myth, but this article has caused me to question my old views.
Climate change denial is a paradigm of AstroTurf.
vjtorley,
I don’t care waht she writes. She’s a crackpot of the highest order. A kid recently died of Diphtheria here because his retarded parents bought all the conspiranoic crap from some crackpot very much like Attkisson.
I thought you were smarter than that Vincent
Pizzagate and antivax within days of each other.
Anyone for AIDS denial?
Duesberg!!! Won’t somebody call Duesberg!!!
Kantian Naturalist:
Panic over climate change sounds more like Astroturfing to me. Compare the tone of these pieces:
to the tone of these ones:
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/27988/20160902/2016-hottest-year-global-warming-unprecedented-pace-millenium-nasa.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/18/2016-locked-into-being-hottest-year-on-record-nasa-says
For the record, I’m a lukewarmer. I think we have about 80 years (not 30) to fix global warming, and even if we only had 30 years, we wouldn’t have a hope anyway. Why not? In a word: Chindia.
http://www1.realclearscience.com/video/2016/11/29/we_need_nuclear_power_to_solve_climate_change.html
Dazz:
I firmly support vaccination. But that doesn’t mean all vaccines are necessarily safe. Attkisson is an award-winning journalist with no obvious axe to grind. Her step-father is an orthopedic surgeon, and her brother is an emergency room physician. Hardly the sort of person I’d call a crank. I don’t know if she’s right or not, but I think she deserves a respectful hearing.
Then why is she giving credit to papers that have been widely criticized by the scientific community?
Bill Nye and Science Lies
Here is How Evolutionists Lie to the Public
Have you read EN&V or UD, vjt?
Glen Davidson
vjtorley,
She references a few papers. Then dismisses critics as “propagandists” or “bloggers”.
Like being a journalist instantly turns you into some kind of authority on scientific issues. Meh
Kantian Naturalist,
And yet the spin phrase “climate change denial” is astro turf.
dazz,
You don’t think the scientific community is ever guilty of astro turf?
Where there is money there is the potential for corruption.
Turfing the turfers!
We’re all Spartacus!
Vincent, I thought you’d turned it over to me. Have you read this yet?–
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/30/donald-trump-george-monbiot-misinformation?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
If you’re really worried about this stuff–you should be worried about that.
From what I have read (perhaps even reliable sources!), the internet has suffered an epidemic of fake news. Some sites (like inforwars) are almost entirely fiction, while others (like breitbart) produce large quantities of it. Trump’s claims that Muslims cheered on 9-11, or that there was widespread election fraud, or that he won a majority, or really most of his claims about Clinton, originated at such sites. Whether you like Trump or not, he illustrates the essence of post-truth, where the Will To Believe overpowers any desire to know the facts. These sites even claim the fact checkers are frauds! And they are part of the MSM, so of course we can believe they are lying to us, right?
Wasn’t it Chesterton who said we should all have open minds, but no so far open our brains fall out. Otherwise, when what we read seems too good to be true, we have exactly the wrong response.
Washington Redskins is not only morally right but is a cultural right to have that name. Don’t touch our souls.
Autism is not created by drugs. its a issue of memory triggering interference. Possibly stiff can bring the interference but autism is probably mostly a socialogical problem and not biological.
I love, love, love, wikipedia. I find it great, accurate, in history, science, music, everthing. Yet i see bias, errors, of coartse I am judging.
I found to my surprise Stephen gould trashed in his wiki article relative to what he said about his PE stuff. I find creationism , of coarse, gets a raw deal.
letting anyone edit is weird.
This is a great video for it teaches, from a inside person, that assertions in public by powerful folks can be wrong or aggressively wrong by way of their bias.
Conservatives would say all big media has a liberal slant and agenda. they do.
However its a problem of humanity simply manifesting itself in new media.
Not blogs,facebook, twitter but just them now.
As the public ability to discern??!!
A history question. Can they or not?
Have you ever read a single comment by the owners of UD? Or a post by News?
However, I’m sure that astroturf does not permit itself to be recognized so easily. Astroturf is more clever than calling others crank or nutty. “Evolution is not science” or “Evolution is just a theory” is the level of UD, an astroturf initiative that never really took off properly. The whole ID “movement” is not a movement, but a little gang limited to the United States. If it were a scientific discovery, it should find recognition elsewhere and a real movement and specialized theorists would organize.
Walto,
I’d like to comment briefly on George Monbiot’s article.
First, George Monbiot is a man whom I respect. He cares deeply about the fate of the planet, and he’s honest enough to say that if nuclear energy may be a necessary part of the solution, if we are to combat global warming.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima
Second, it seems that his latest article is a mixed bag. Lumping the tobacco lobby, the Koch brothers, global warming denialists and Trump in the same bag is a bit ridiculous. Trump doesn’t even like the Koch brothers – and vice versa.
Third, I think it’s fair to accuse the tobacco lobby of Astroturfing (because of the fake studies they sponsored), but Charles Koch’s attitude to global warming is more complex. See here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/06/06/what-charles-koch-really-thinks-about-climate-change/?utm_term=.a9b10276fa64
He’s actually sponsoring research into carbon capture and storage, that could combat anthropogenic global warming, and he’s open to the idea that it’s real. He sounds more like a lukewarmer than a denialist.
Fourth, if someone were to seriously argue that AGW is all an illusion, citing studies to support their view, then I’d be happy to call that Astroturfing.
Fifth, I’m reserving judgment on Donald Trump. I can’t figure out whether he’s very smart (as Scott Adams thinks) or very stupid (as the MSM thinks) or a complex mixture of both. One thing I will say, though: illegal voting is a real problem. See here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/do-illegal-votes-decide-elections-1480551000 . How prevalent it is, is another matter. It may be quite prevalent in California, but there’s no way California would ever vote for Trump, anyway.
Glen Davidson,
The first link you cite (an ENV articl by Bruce Chapman) doesn’t support your case. Its tone is fairly moderate:
The other link is to an article on Cornelius Hunter’s blogspot, “Darwin’s God,” of which only the first paragraph has been posted on Uncommon Descent. I would agree with you that the tone of this article marks it out as Astroturf.
With respect to evolution, who is astroturfing? Not most evolutionary biologists in the U,S,, whio point alarmedly to the large fraction of the population that are creationists. As for making bogus claims of whether there is wide support for contemporary evolutionary biology, just look up “Project Steve” to see whether it is the DI or the NCSE that is falsely claiming widespread support among biologists.
I thought it was the “mainstream” media that was supposed to be liberal/communist, dangerous, lying, in cahoots, etc. Now it turns out the liberals are at fault for befouling the non-mainstream media too? It’s the damn alt-left that’s the problem? Please.
Here’s another Guardian article for you, Vincent:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-democracy-truth-internet-search-facebook
You can test these claims on google yourself. These aren’t examples of left wing astro turf at all, are they? In fact that claim is itself astro turf, as is the video you posted.
Exactly right. This whole “I know you are but what am I” ploy is entirely disingenuous.
walto,
Just tried “are Jews” and though I didn’t get the predictive text (maybe something to to with me not having Chrome set to English as research language), I certainly got the hate sites.
Joe Felsenstein,
Both these organizations are professional at astroturf “climate deniers” “evolution deniers” % or scientists the support climate change % or scientists that question evolution. Birds of the same feather.
I always thought astroturfing was the masking the sponsors and funding to make it seem it originates from the bottom up rather than the top down. A public relations ploy.
Über wants to fight regulations passed by a city council, to do so creates Neighbors against Government Overreach which represents itself as just simple folks fighting the man keeping the brother down.
All this stuff about tone seems more about Sheryl Attkisson than defining astroturfing .
Speaking of “pizza gate”….
http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/05/media/fake-news-real-violence-pizzagate/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Top+Stories%29
I guess he felt it was his duty to investigate like William but was unable to create a post at TSZ.
Whoa. this video is great evidence against evolutiondom.
Its evolutionists who CRY bogus, fraud, pseudo, special interests, etc etc against ID’YEC creationism agitation.
They cry quackery, and not experts, etc etc against creationists.
In all ways, or a lot, evolutionists astroturf in the origin contentions.
Its all about someone in power dismissing someone trying to gain power in conclusions etc.
I wish I knew what that sentence meant.
I agree with newton, astroturfing is creating a false impression that a movement is grass-roots, when actually it is not. In the case of support for modern evolutionary biology, the issue is how many scientists disagree with it. Project Steve makes it abundantly clear which organization, the DI or the NCSE, is trying to create the false impression.
Joe Felsenstein,
After reading it I agree it needs clarity 🙂
My point is not to contradict yours but merely to add both organizations use astroturf persuasion techniques as evidence of their chosen words such as “denier”.
[Godwin]
Does it also count as using “astroturf persuasion techniques” (whatever the heck that means) to refer to Holocaust deniers as such?
[/Godwin]
of
I notice that there has been some commentary lately about “false equivalence” in the MSM – that when 97% of scientists agree and only 3% are skeptical, the MSM gives equal time to both sides and carefully draws no conclusion, giving the false impression of a balanced debate.
Perhaps the NCSE’s material is misleading at times. But the DI is NOT equivalent, they are in an entirely different league. ALL of their material is deliberately and flagrantly false without exception. They are even on record as trying to create an alternative reality by lying nonstop. Claiming that the occasional error makes the NCSE equivalent to the DI’s consistent deliberate blatant falsehoods illustrates exactly the sort of dishonesty for which the DI is so well noted.
Re climate change: I quite agree that about 97% of experts in the field agree that global warming is real and mostly man-made, over the past 40 years. What they do not agree on is whether it is likely to be catastrophic. Estimates of the long-term effects (ECS) of a doubling of CO2 levels range from 1 degree Celsius to 7 degrees Celsius, and probably most would say somewhere around 3 degrees. But many eminent climatologists think it’s less than that.
The simplistic view that there is a class of pig-ignorant “deniers” on the one hand, and an educated class of believers in CAGW, on the other hand, overlooks the many people who dwell in the sensible middle: lukewarmers. And no, we’re not procrastinators; we’re realists. We know that it’s going to take at least $100 trillion to fix global warming, and that right now, there is no fix, because there’s no renewable energy technology that can be scaled up to meet the planet’s energy needs. So if CAGW were real, we’re all doomed anyway.
Re evolution: Professor Felsenstein is perfectly right to point out that the vast majority of biologists accept macroevolution and common descent as facts. But I don’t think the Discovery Institute would seriously claim otherwise. What they claim is that a small but significant minority of biologists disagrees with the standard view. They also argue that most scientists haven’t heard the views of the other side.
However, I am heartened that some biology professors these days actually encourage their students to read books written by ID proponents. At least they’re being fair.
Re Pizzagate: I’m a regular reader of Drudge Report, The Federalist and American Thinker (but not Breitbart or Infowars), and I have to say that I never heard of this PizzaGate story. Sounds like an MSM beatup to me. Anything to discredit Trump supporters. Sour grapes. The world has moved on.
That ought to be enough for you to condemn nearly every oppositional site on this matter as astroturf. But you do not. You prefer to aim your arrows at sites that agree with you on these points but would go farther or more quickly than you on doing something about it. That strikes me as disingenuous.
vjtorley,
Astroturf? Based on what data? Science by vote?
Flint,
This is just because of your cognitive bias. Don’t you think these political organizations are doing their best to spin their point of view? “Denier” used as a phrase for instant disqualification of a point view is some of the greatest astroturf of all time. Yes, created from the pros at the NCSE.
Is there a book out there written by an ID proponent that verses on ID and not about what evolution can or can’t do? Because if there isn’t we should probably call them evolution critics (more like deniers) instead of ID proponents
When one is not oneself an expert in some field, a 97% vote of those who are should be taken seriously. The cognitive bias you speak of is most clearly evident among those who discard a clear consensus of that magnitude among people in the field, and substitute their own judgments–especially those who have a clear and well-known personal interest in the matter.
That’s all obvious, actually.
It’s a good way to show students how not to think scientifically.
I’ve always thought that if ID was included in biology as the antithesis of what science is and does it could be helpful. The killer of that is, of course, that too many teachers would pretend that ID proves baby Jesus.
Glen Davidson
walto,
Yep. Until you realize the ” 97% statement is really astroturf’ and you look at the data which we all are capable of doing and see it is inconclusive.
I just took that pct from Torley. What data are you referring to?
That scientists must go along to get along? Does the sponsorship of the minority view by corporations that vested interest cause equal skepticism?
97 % of scientists look at the data and draw another conclusion that it is statistically significant , why should your view carry more weight? What would be conclusive evidence?
pizzagate was all over the alt-right sites:
http://www.dailystormer.com/massive-cover-up-of-pizzagate-child-sex-ring-allegations/
Mike Cernovich and Alex Jones have been talking about pizzagate for months.
Michael Flynn Jr. was also a big tweeter about it.