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Digital Astroturfing

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Digital Astroturfing Digital Astroturfing: Definition, typology, and countermeasures. Marko Kovic,∗ Adrian Rauchfleisch,y and Marc Selez ZIPAR - Zurich Institute of Public Affairs Research, Zurich, Switzerland First draft: December 22, 2015 This version: October 12, 2016 ∗[email protected] yadrian.rauchfl[email protected] [email protected] 1 Abstract In recent years, several instances of political actors creating fake grassroots activity on the Internet have been uncovered. We propose to call such fake online grassroots activity digital astroturfing. In this paper, we lay out a conceptual map of the phenomenon of digital astroturfing. To that end, we first define digital astroturfing as a form of manufactured, deceptive and strategic top-down activity on the In- ternet initiated by political actors that mimics bottom-up activity by autonomous individuals. Next, we explore a typology of digital astroturf- ing according to the dimensions of the target of digital astroturfing, the political actors who engage in digital astroturfing and the goals of the digital astroturfing activity. Following the discussion of our proposed typology, we introduce the concept of digital astroturfing repertoires, the possible combinations of tools, venues and actions used for digital astroturfing efforts. Finally, we discuss how to prevent or curb dig- ital astroturfing by implementing certain restrictive or incentivizing countermeasures. The main use of this conceptual study is to serve as a basis for future empirical work. Even though empirical research on digital astroturfing is inherently difficult since digital astroturfing is a clandestine activity, it is not impossible. We suggest some viable research strategies. 1 Introduction: The many faces of digital as- troturfing On August 18, 2015, Lyudmila Savchuk won a lawsuit against her former employer, the St. Petersburg based “Internet Research Agency”1. Formally, Ms. Savchuk filed the lawsuit against her former employer because of irregu- larities concerning the employment contract and the payment of wages. Such a dispute between an employee and their employer is a rather mundane affair, but Ms. Savchuk’s case was quite remarkable for another reason. The Internet Research Agency is an organization that, according to different sources – Ms. Savchuk, who is an investigative journalist, being one of them – , specialized in a specific form of propaganda2 on behalf of the Russian government under president Vladimir Putin: The Internet Research Agency’s employees would create a number of fake online personæ, sometimes referred to metaphorically 1 “Агентство интернет-исследований” 2We understand propaganda as a form of persuasive political communication which does not appeal to reason and argument but rather to emotion by means of manipulation through symbols (Jowett & O’Donnell, 2014; Lasswell, 1927). 2 as sock puppets (Bu, Xia, & Wang, 2013), and spread messages supportive of the Russian government across different channels, such as the comment sections of news websites (A. Chen, 2015; France-Presse, 2015; Khazan, 2013). The case of the Internet Research Agency might be one that has been prominently discussed through thorough news reporting, but it is far from the only occurrence of online activities that are not genuine but rather created by political actors. For example, it has been observed for a number of years that the Chinese government pays users to promote pro-government standpoints in online discussions. The Chinese goverment’s activity in that respect has become so notorious that the paid users are sometimes referred to as the “50 Cent army” (Cook, 2011; Hung, 2010) or the “Internet water army”3 (C. Chen, Wu, Srinivasan, & Zhang, 2011). Dishonest and manipulative online activities are not limited to (former) Communist countries. A prominent Western example of such activities has been the United States Central Command’s attempt at creating an “online persona management service”, i.e., a system for creating and deploying sock puppets in online communication flows (Fielding & Cobain, 2011). It is not always governments that engage in such activities; other actors do so as well, and possibly on less of a grand scale. For example, in 2014 it came to light that a number of Austrian companies and political parties hired a marketing agency to create user comments on news websites that cast them in a positive light (Apfl & Kleiner, 2014). Some instances of dishonest online propaganda verge on the hapless, such as a Swiss politician’s attempt at radiating popularity by paying for followers on the social media service Twitter (Neuhaus, 2015). The cases mentioned above are quite different from each other: Different political actors in different countries do different things with, presumably, different goals. However, all of the cases mentioned above also have something in common: They are all examples of a type of political communication on the Internet that hides its true nature and that is intended to give the impression of being the honest opinion of individual online users when it is, in fact, not. We call this type of political online communication digital astroturfing. The term “astroturfing” is usually used to describe “fake grassroots” campaigns and organizations backed by businesses or political actors (Lyon & Maxwell, 2004; E. T. Walker & Rea, 2014); the term is an allusion to the “AstroTurf” brand of synthetic turf. With the concept of digital astroturfing, we aim to offer an understanding of the general principle of astroturfing for the specific domain of Internet-based activities. The goal of the present paper is threefold. First, we define digital astro- 3The name “Internet water army” is a metaphor for the large number of users who “flood” online discussions with pro-government opinions. 3 turfing in a generalized, universally applicable manner. Second, we propose a typology of different forms of digital astroturfing, based on the type of actor and the type of goal that is pursued by the digital astroturfing effort. Third, we discuss possible countermeasures to either prevent digital astroturfing or to lessen its impact. 2 A generalized definition of digital astroturf- ing In the previous section, we have provisionally introduced digital astroturfing as a type of political online activity that pretends to be the activity of individual, regular online users, when it is in fact activity created by political actors. Such a provisional definition already describes the nature of digital astroturfing to some degree, but it is derived from an intuitive inductive process of describing what different cases of digital astroturfing have in common. A more precise deductive definition is needed in order to describe digital astroturfing in a generalized way, independent from specific singular occurrences of digital astroturfing. To that end, we propose the following definition: Digital astroturfing is a form of manufactured, deceptive and strategic top-down activity on the Internet initiated by political actors that mimics bottom-up activity by autonomous individuals. In this definition, digital astroturfing as a form of political activity consists of five necessary conditions: It takes place on the Internet, it is initiated by political actors, it is manufactured, it is deceptive and it is strategic. Digital astroturfing is manufactured in that it is not an honest expression of autonomous individual opinions, but rather activity created to mimic honest expression of autonomous individual opinions. It is deceptive, because the goal of digital astroturfing is to trick the audience, usually the public at large, into believing that the manufactured activity is real. It is strategic, because the political actors who engage in digital astroturfing pursue certain goals in doing so. This definition is relatively simple, but in simplicity, we believe, lies analytical clarity. So far, only few authors have attempted to define digital astroturfing. The most relevant such attempt is a recent conceptual study by Zhang, Carpenter, and Ko (2013, p. 3). In that study, the authors define online astroturfing (the authors use the term “online” rather than “digital” astroturfing) as follows: Therefore, we define online astroturfing as the dissemination of deceptive opinions by imposters posing as autonomous individuals 4 on the Internet with the intention of promoting a specific agenda. [Italics in the original.] This definition is similar to the one we introduce in three respects. First, we have adopted the authors’ very apt notion of “autonomous individuals” into our own definition because it describes very precisely what kind of deception is taking place. We expand the descriptive notion of autonomous individuals by contrasting bottom-up and top-down activity; autonomous individuals engage in bottom-up activity, and digital astroturfing is top-down activity pretending to be bottom-up activity. Second, and this is non-trivial, the authors define digital astroturfing as an activity that is taking place on the Internet. And third, they describe digital astroturfing as a deceptive activity. We agree with those three aspects as necessary conditions, but the definition lacks accuracy and generalizability. The definition is inaccurate because it implies that the relevant actors are the “imposters” posing as autonomous individuals. However, the truly relevant actors are not the “imposters” themselves, but rather the political actors initiating the astroturfing efforts. The “imposters”, such as, for example, the employees of the Internet Research Institute in St. Petersburg, are simply performing tasks on behalf of
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