Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Bloggers in Defense of Astroturf
The Internet has proven a benefit for interest groups and their companions in the PR industry by giving them one more tool in their arsenal of influence. Interest groups have as a sole objective the desire to influence public policy in a way that benefits their members. They employ two strategies to conduct this influence. The first involves inside lobbying and the second involves outside lobbying.
Inside lobbying generally involves the use of lobbyists who work the corridors of Congress and the executive branch agencies, as well as the White House Office. Outside lobbying, however, utilizes two different components: Electoral and Grassroots efforts. Electoral involves the funding of campaigns and has its own extensive nomenclature: PACS, Bundling, etc. Grassroots efforts mostly involve the use of public relations firms, which devise strategies to motivate a particular section of the public to influence public policy.
For instance, a PR firm will develop a series of targeted advertisements that do not reach the general public, but instead are aimed at particular elites. In 1993, the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA) produced a series of television advertisements that featured a fictitious couple Harry and Louise, who sat around the breakfast table, or driving to work in their car, and blasted the Clinton health care plan as a "big government" or "Canadian-style" health care plan. The ads appeared mostly in DC, New York City, and the districts of prominent Committee members. The effect? It elevated the HIAA plan to a point that enabled it to torpedo the Clinton plan. Or, a PR firm will place advertorials in prominent newspapers or trade magazines in an effort to motivate policymakers or journalists.
And then there is astroturfing. Astroturfing involves the creation of faux-grassroots movements in which an interest group hires a PR firm to pay individuals to protest certain actions, or "help" citizens write letters to members of Congress over a particular issue, or, in a recent effort, place false information on prominent websites to whip the blogging community into a frenzy.
For those who use the web on a regular basis, it is likely that you also have either come across the Slashdot website or you receive their newsletter every day to keep up on technology and politics. The newsletter on January 17 contained a story about federal legislation that threatened to shut down political bloggers in the United States. In the Senate an amendment added to the legislative transparency bill (S.1) mandated that "political bloggers with a readership of over 500 who comment on policy matters or hope to incite 'grassroots' action amongst their readers would be forced to register with the Federal Government as a lobbyist." The information came by way of the PRNewswire, or the "public relations" newswire, and it quoted Richard Viguerie, Chair of an organization named GrassrootsFreedom.com. All that it says about Mr. Viguerie is that he "...started GrassrootsFreedom.com to fight efforts to silence the grassroots." He claimed in the piece that "thousands of nonprofit leaders, bloggers, and other citizens have hammered the Senate with calls in opposition to Section 220, which seeks to silence the grassroots." See how one might also wish to do his or her part by passing the information along in their blog or by contacting their member of Congress?
It appears that bloggers and other grassroots activists, as well as John and Jane Q Public won the day, because the next day, the Senate voted to remove the section, and on Friday the 19th--two days after the article appeared on Slashdot, the Slashdot newsletter reported: BILL TO TREAT BLOGGERS AS LOBBYISTS DEFEATED. A win for democracy? Not so fast. Today we learn that Richard Viguerie is a "Conservative direct mail guru" whose advertising firm, American Target Advertising (ATA), would have stood to lose if Section 220 to S.1 had passed. And "GrassrootsFreedom.com? It is a fictional creation of ATA.
It appears that Section 220 was designed to shed light on astroturf campaigns by forcing any "grassroots" organization that was created by pay to register with the FEC or face a fine. Not to target any blogger commenting on politics:
...instead of putting pressure on the Senate to fix a well-intentioned - but poorly executed - proposal, ATA launched a scare campaign aimed at convincing the blogging community that the federal government was waiting in the wings to send its critics in the blogosphere to jail if they failed to register as grassroots lobbyists.
A search on Google of blogs who bit confirms the scare tactic worked. Rather than looking into the bill, which can be readily accessed at Thomas, most bloggers used this language: "According to some accounts, even amateur bloggers would have been required to make formal reports..." And we beat up professional journalists who refer to "sources say"!
Kudos to SlashDot which placed the ruse in its newsletter today.
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Inside lobbying generally involves the use of lobbyists who work the corridors of Congress and the executive branch agencies, as well as the White House Office. Outside lobbying, however, utilizes two different components: Electoral and Grassroots efforts. Electoral involves the funding of campaigns and has its own extensive nomenclature: PACS, Bundling, etc. Grassroots efforts mostly involve the use of public relations firms, which devise strategies to motivate a particular section of the public to influence public policy.
For instance, a PR firm will develop a series of targeted advertisements that do not reach the general public, but instead are aimed at particular elites. In 1993, the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA) produced a series of television advertisements that featured a fictitious couple Harry and Louise, who sat around the breakfast table, or driving to work in their car, and blasted the Clinton health care plan as a "big government" or "Canadian-style" health care plan. The ads appeared mostly in DC, New York City, and the districts of prominent Committee members. The effect? It elevated the HIAA plan to a point that enabled it to torpedo the Clinton plan. Or, a PR firm will place advertorials in prominent newspapers or trade magazines in an effort to motivate policymakers or journalists.
And then there is astroturfing. Astroturfing involves the creation of faux-grassroots movements in which an interest group hires a PR firm to pay individuals to protest certain actions, or "help" citizens write letters to members of Congress over a particular issue, or, in a recent effort, place false information on prominent websites to whip the blogging community into a frenzy.
For those who use the web on a regular basis, it is likely that you also have either come across the Slashdot website or you receive their newsletter every day to keep up on technology and politics. The newsletter on January 17 contained a story about federal legislation that threatened to shut down political bloggers in the United States. In the Senate an amendment added to the legislative transparency bill (S.1) mandated that "political bloggers with a readership of over 500 who comment on policy matters or hope to incite 'grassroots' action amongst their readers would be forced to register with the Federal Government as a lobbyist." The information came by way of the PRNewswire, or the "public relations" newswire, and it quoted Richard Viguerie, Chair of an organization named GrassrootsFreedom.com. All that it says about Mr. Viguerie is that he "...started GrassrootsFreedom.com to fight efforts to silence the grassroots." He claimed in the piece that "thousands of nonprofit leaders, bloggers, and other citizens have hammered the Senate with calls in opposition to Section 220, which seeks to silence the grassroots." See how one might also wish to do his or her part by passing the information along in their blog or by contacting their member of Congress?
It appears that bloggers and other grassroots activists, as well as John and Jane Q Public won the day, because the next day, the Senate voted to remove the section, and on Friday the 19th--two days after the article appeared on Slashdot, the Slashdot newsletter reported: BILL TO TREAT BLOGGERS AS LOBBYISTS DEFEATED. A win for democracy? Not so fast. Today we learn that Richard Viguerie is a "Conservative direct mail guru" whose advertising firm, American Target Advertising (ATA), would have stood to lose if Section 220 to S.1 had passed. And "GrassrootsFreedom.com? It is a fictional creation of ATA.
It appears that Section 220 was designed to shed light on astroturf campaigns by forcing any "grassroots" organization that was created by pay to register with the FEC or face a fine. Not to target any blogger commenting on politics:
...instead of putting pressure on the Senate to fix a well-intentioned - but poorly executed - proposal, ATA launched a scare campaign aimed at convincing the blogging community that the federal government was waiting in the wings to send its critics in the blogosphere to jail if they failed to register as grassroots lobbyists.
A search on Google of blogs who bit confirms the scare tactic worked. Rather than looking into the bill, which can be readily accessed at Thomas, most bloggers used this language: "According to some accounts, even amateur bloggers would have been required to make formal reports..." And we beat up professional journalists who refer to "sources say"!
Kudos to SlashDot which placed the ruse in its newsletter today.
