In recent years, several instances of political actors who created fake grassroots activity on the Internet have been uncovered. We propose to call such fake online grassroots activity digital astroturfing, and we define it as 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. The goal of this paper is to lay out a conceptual map of the phenomenon of digital astroturfing in politics. To that end, we introduce, first, a typology of digital astroturfing according to three dimensions (target, actor type, goals), and, second, the concept of digital astroturfing repertoires, the possible combinations of tools, venues and actions used in digital astroturfing efforts. Furthermore, we explore possible restrictive and incentivizing countermeasures against digital astroturfing. Finally, we discuss prospects for future research: Even though empirical research on digital astroturfing is difficult, it is neither impossible nor futile.
In recent years, several instances of political actors who created fake grassroots activity on the Internet have been uncovered. We propose to call such fake online grassroots activity digital astroturfing, and we define it as 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. The goal of this paper is to lay out a conceptual map of the phenomenon of digital astroturfing in politics. To that end, we introduce, first, a typology of digital astroturfing according to three dimensions (target, actor type, goals), and, second, the concept of digital astroturfing repertoires, the possible combinations of tools, venues and actions used in digital astroturfing efforts. Furthermore, we explore possible restrictive and incentivizing countermeasures against digital astroturfing. Finally, we discuss prospects for future research: Even though empirical research on digital astroturfing is difficult, it is neither impossible nor futile.
In this study, we analyze whether the mere volume of presence in mass media and the mere volume of activity on social media convey advantages to candidates in parliamentary elections. Based on the theoretical model of bounded rationality, we call these potential effects brute force effects. During the last month of the election campaign of the Swiss federal election of 2015, we have tracked the presence of all 873 candidates in the canton of Zurich, the most populous canton, in a broad sample of mass media. Additionally, we have tracked those candidates' activity on Facebook and Twitter. The results of our multilevel Bayesian estimates show that mass media presence has a consistent non-trivial impact on different aspects of electoral outcome. Furthermore, social media activity also has a non-trivial impact, but only in terms of resonance (reactions to candidates' social media activity). Overall, our results suggest that brute force effects of of mass media presence and social media activity can have substantial impact on voting behavior.
We propose a definition of post-factual political discourse as a discursive attitude that consists of three components: Motivated reasoning, conspiratorial epistemology, and bullshit. Motivated reasoning means that any piece of new information will never weaken pre-existing beliefs; it is a form of confirmation bias. Conspiratorial epistemology occurs when information that contradicts pre-existing beliefs is automatically dismissed because it was allegedly manufactured by some conspiracy; evidence for that conspiracy and for the falsity of the dismissed information is not presented. Bullshit is a speach act with which the speaker aims to achieve only some instrumental goal; whether the uttered speech act is true or not is of no consequence to the speaker. Post-factual political discourse is a challenge for democracy because it erodes the epistemic dimension of democracy (thereby making it difficult, if not impossible to identify and solve societal problems) and because it erodes bridging social capital (thereby increasing polarization and tribalization).
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