One of the untold stories about the online world is how many comments on Web sites are not what they seem. No one can say how many exactly, but a large percentage of comments on news sites and blogs are not genuinely spontaneous outpourings; they are in fact what are called “astroturfing” – the artificial creation of popular support.
This little blog amazingly got caught in one of those astroturfing efforts last July. As we did for many of the cities we visited, we posted a few photos and general impressions of the places. We posted our impressions of Flint, Michigan after spending several hours driving around the city.
The next business day we noticed that visits to our blog tripled, with most of those hits coming from this URL: http://cbeachmail.com/t/w/DJELBYQ/. That URL is a copy of an e-mail sent out by the PR Manager of the Flint Area Convention and Visitors Bureau calling on his business associates to make comments on our blog demanding we show “the complete picture” of Flint. The director made our blog entry the Number One item on his report (apparently we were the most pressing issue in Flint that week). The speed with which the PR Manager send out a call to action–he found our blog entry almost as soon as the search engines indexed it–means he is actively searching the Web for any mention of Flint.
The PR Manager did not contact us and attempt to find out who we were or what we were about. He published his e-mail calling for expressions of outrage before he posted his comment on our blog entry. What he and the other three people who commented (not a big outpouring of support, no) said were versions of “don’t look at that look at this and forget that first thing you saw” with the implication that we shouldn’t be sharing our own experiences of Flint. The whole thing had a calculated and cynical edge to it. Especially when you consider that the effort was directed at an amateurish, silly, blog that almost no one reads.
When the U.S. Census Bureau announced three months later that Flint has one of the highest poverty rates in the United States, we posted a second blog entry mentioning that fact. I wondered if the PR Manager would react the same way. Almost immediately we started receiving hits from another e-mail sent out by the PR Manager. This time he attacked us as “a blogger who previously unfairly criticized Flint … who obviously has it out for Flint.”
Most revealing was the PR Manager’s comment in the second e-mail claiming that he had asked us to “why not also post a couple photos of Blackstone’s or the Wade Trim building.” First, he did not (though we did permit someone else to post links to photos of other places in Flint, so we did in fact do what he wanted). Second, even if he had, does he really think that us showing photos of one restaurant and one building would somehow negate the fact that Flint has a poverty rate of nearly 10% and dilapidated neighborhoods?
I am reminded of how the Corporate Media will define “balance” as, for example, presenting one person who believes in climate change and one who doesn’t even though the climate change deniers are an extremely small minority of scientists. The media thus presents a false notion that scientists are divided on the issue.The Corporate Media is, no doubt, being pressured by corporate interests to be so “balanced.”
If the Flint, MI Area Convention and Visitors Bureau is monitoring Web sites and pressuring them to revise their content to suit Flint’s preferred narrative about themselves, how much more are large corporations that have so many more resources engaging in pressuring Web sites to manufacture and influence public opinion?
Now when you think about how a worthless, meaningless blog like this can be astroturfed by corporate forces, just think of how much more major Web sites are being swamped with phony outrage. Next time you see a bunch of comments on news or social networking sites that seem to indicate “average people” are defending monied corporate interests, be a little suspicious.
