This study is the first to scrutinize the psychological effects of online astroturfing in the context of Russia’s digitally enabled foreign propaganda. Online astroturfing is a communicative strategy that uses websites, “sock puppets,” or social bots to create the false impression that a particular opinion has widespread public support. We exposed N = 2353 subjects to pro-Russian astroturfing comments and tested: (1) their effects on political opinions and opinion certainty and (2) the efficiency of three inoculation strategies to prevent these effects. All effects were investigated across three issues and from a short- and long-term perspective. Results show that astroturfing comments can indeed alter recipients’ opinions, and increase uncertainty, even when subjects are inoculated before exposure. We found exclusively short-term effects of only one inoculation strategy (refutational-same). As these findings imply, preemptive media literacy campaigns should deploy (1) continuous rather than one-time efforts and (2) issue specific rather than abstract inoculation messages.
Online astroturfing is a novel form of disinformation that relies on the imitation of citizen voices to create the false impression that a particular view or idea has widespread support in society. In this study, we test if political online astroturfing messages (i.e., forged user comments beneath digital news items) can influence perceptions of public opinion on three issues: the poisoning of the former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, the use of toxic gas by Russia's close ally Syria, and the manipulation of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We further examine the immunizing effects of three inoculation strategies to prevent the distorting effects of online astroturfing comments. Our results indicate that only a few astroturfing comments can bias readers' perceptions of public opinion in the intended direction. Moreover, prior inoculation only provides limited protection against this effect. Only one inoculation strategy (refutational‐same) proved to be effective, but even this effect is only short‐term. Our findings indicate that recent fears about the potentially negative effects of this novel form of disinformation on political discourse are justified and underscore the difficulties of responding to this challenge.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.