‘Astroturfing’ and the rise of misinformation campaigns

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Astroturfing and the rise of misinformation campaigns NewsLiteracyWeek

CHICAGO — Despite the natural urge to gravitate toward information that reinforces our own views, most agree that people genuinely want to be well-informed. But in recent years, campaigns by corporations, lobbyists and political operatives sowing division and suspicion have become a common problem.

But many of these protests that appeared to be generated spontaneously were in fact manufactured by well-funded organizations. The practice is known as “astroturfing.” “A lot of astroturfing campaigns have been all over the Internet,” said JungHwan Yang, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, whose research focuses on data science and political communication. “It's not just on Twitter or Facebook. It's on Wikipedia. It's on a forum and everywhere.”

Multiple cybersecurity firms investigated the “Reopen America” movement, finding that domains were being batch registered within seconds of each other. One way to do that, she says, is to watch for messaging that strikes a nerve or sparks an immediate visceral response.

 

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