Digital Media takes a look today at the growing practice of astroturfing in China. Astroturfing is when a company pays people to post on blogs, blanket message forums, and comment just about anywhere people can manage to promote a company's name. The article suggests that astroturfing could be effective in Chinese Internet culture, and evaluates the pro's and con's of starting a campaign.
While it's relatively inexpensive to pay for an astroturf campaign (50 cents per post), the article suggests that it can be difficult to have an impact due to the sheer number of posts that are written every day in China. There are other problems as well, like a brand-damaging online backlash from readers when a campaign is exposed. However, Edelman Digital manager Adam Schokora thinks that the Chinese may be less prone to be offended by astroturfing because they have developed an Internet culture which is already complicit to it.
"No ‘official’ code of online ethics exists in China yet, as it does to some degree in the West. In the US, for example, Wal-Mart was roundly attacked for paying bloggers without disclosing it. 'The problem is that inauthentic communications methods are so ingrained into the culture of the Chinese internet,' says Schokora."
Schokora seriously underestimates the prevalence of astroturfing in the U.S. While there is usually an uproar when a company's astroturfing practices are discovered, that hasn't stopped companies (and politicians) from astroturfing on a regular basis. Just last week, the Washington Post noted an incentive program offered by the McCain campaign to post comments favorable to its candidate. Calley Nye, former TechCrunch writer and marketer, includes astroturfing in a list of specialties on her LinkedIn profile.
Astroturfing isn't limited to other cultures; it's firmly ingrained in the Internet marketing culture. There may be a bigger reaction from the U.S. audiences when astroturfing is discovered, but that isn't stopping companies from using it as a marketing technique.
Photo by Laurent van Roy, used under the GNU Free Documentation license
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