What is astroturfing?
Astroturfing is the informal term for campaigns or messages that appear to be naturally occurring, but are actually being defined by a company. Astroturfing hides the financial and business associations between the originating company and the message, potentially making corporate messaging more palatable to a public that might reject forthright propaganda.
- The term "astroturfing" is a play on the term "grassroots movement," since the grass is fake. Astroturfing has been attempted by online businesses who present a product as being highly desired and sought out by a certain customer base via company-sponsored message board posts, blogs or articles when there is no evidence to support such an assertion.
