How fake fights, bad headlines, bots and comment sections shape what we think is true.

Viral conversation and mostly rumours aren’t always the result of organic conversations. Sometimes, organised, well-funded efforts drive the spread of misinformation, deliberately steering online discourse for political or financial gain. This is called astroturfing, where coordinated efforts fake the appearance of grassroots support or opposition, showing how easily digital spaces can be steered from the top down.

Parts 2 and 3 looked at how rumours evolve naturally and what psychological forces keep them spreading. This part focuses on deliberate interference. Politically motivated groups, corporate PR teams, and special-interest lobbyists all use astroturfing tactics to push an agenda, whether that’s a policy position, a product, or a band. Once you know what to look for, you start noticing how often ‘public opinion’ isn’t especially public, or especially spontaneous.

And it’s not just about fake accounts (anymore). As you’ll see later in this piece, the platforms themselves can do some of astroturfing’s work for free, by surfacing one opinion enough times in different fonts that it starts to feel like consensus, no coordination required.

Defining Astroturfing: Manufactured public support

The term ‘astroturf’ comes from the artificial grass brand, a fake version of the real thing (Howard, 2006). Instead of genuine public interest, astroturfing relies on organised campaigns that pay or incentivise real or fake users to post uniform messages, creating the illusion of widespread agreement or outrage.

Two examples show how far this can reach:

During the Brexit referendum, several groups that presented themselves as independent grassroots campaigns for leaving the EU were later found to have direct links to the official Vote Leave campaign. This manufactured a false sense of widespread, independent support that wasn’t there in reality (newstatesman.com).

In 2012, the Responsible Energy Citizen Coalition launched what looked like a citizen-led campaign to influence European Parliament reports on shale gas exploration. It was later exposed as an astroturfing effort backed by industry interests (onlinelibrary.wiley.com).

Astroturfing exploits the trust people place in public sentiment, and community discussions, steering opinions without revealing the manipulation behind it.

Beyond Politics: Astroturfing in the everyday, and from celebrity to entertainment

Astroturfing isn’t just limited to elections or public policy. It appears in everyday spaces like travel, entertainment, and consumer culture, subtly shaping perceptions and influencing decisions.

When I visited Albania two years ago, I noticed something. Restaurants, beaches, and other businesses often ask visitors to leave reviews, which isn’t unusual itself. But what caught my attention were the agencies openly advertising services to write fake reviews around the towns, offering to boost online reputations for a fee.

Some businesses there hire agencies to flood Google and TripAdvisor with glowing reviews, easily swaying potential customers into believing a service is better than it really is (theinnerdolphin.com).

I also spent several years in the music and entertainment industry, where astroturfing tactics are sometimes used to manufacture an artist’s popularity, something I saw play out firsthand. Labels, PR teams and marketing agencies can orchestrate artificial buzz to make a song or artist look more popular than it is: a tactic that’s older than the internet itself. In the 1950s, the payola scandal exposed record labels secretly paying radio DJs to play their songs, manufacturing hits out of paid airplay rather than genuine demand; it became a criminal offence in the US by 1960, though the practice never fully disappeared. Today’s version just runs on different infrastructure: bot streams inflating numbers, or coordinated ‘fan’ accounts flooding social media with the same hashtags and talking points.

In 2024, Normani, formerly of Fifth Harmony, was caught up in controversy when a fan account, @NormaniNation, posted a screenshot that revealed the “Edit Profile” button, something only visible to the account owner. This led to speculation that she herself was managing the account, crafting the illusion of grassroots fan support. When questioned, Normani sidestepped the accusations, neither confirming nor denying her involvement (the-sun.com).

One more recent example: a marketing firm called Chaotic Good Projects became the centre of a music-industry controversy after Wired reported that the buzz around the band Geese was, in the outlet’s words, a ‘psyop’ built on networks of TikTok accounts designed to push the band’s music into the recommendation algorithm and manufacture the appearance of organic discourse. The story provoked pushback from the band and from music journalists, who argued the piece overstated how effective these tactics actually are. That pushback is itself worth noting: the companies selling astroturfing services have every incentive to convince you they work. (wired.com)

Astroturfing also shows up in the messier, more adversarial end of celebrity PR. In her 2024 legal complaint against Justin Baldoni, actor Blake Lively alleged that his crisis PR team had planned to ‘bury’ her reputation by hiring contractors to flood social media with coordinated, untraceable narratives portraying her as difficult to work with. Here astroturfing was used not to build support, but to manufacture opposition instead (similar to Depp vs Heard – bbc.com). A later data analysis reportedly found overlap between accounts pushing narratives in that campaign and accounts involved in a separate, unrelated smear campaign. A reminder that the same networks of fake or duplicate accounts (often called “sock puppets” in the industry) can be recycled across totally different targets. (people.com)



Genuine fans might feel pressured to match the manufactured enthusiasm, reinforcing the illusion of widespread support or innocence where none really exists.

Key Tactics in Astroturfing

Astroturfing works by blending in with genuine engagement, which is making it tricky to spot. A handful of recurring tactics do most of the work.

Paid Influencers and Commenters

Companies or political groups pay influencers to promote a viewpoint under the guise of authentic opinion. Another variation is the ‘comment army’, these are groups of individuals or contractors managing coordinated accounts to shift narratives across forums, TikTok comments, or Twitter threads. These comments are aimed to flood a conversation with praise or criticism to sway opinion.

Sock-Puppet Accounts

A sock-puppet account is a fake online identity created for deceptive purposes. One person might run multiple accounts, each adopting different personas to make it seem like a larger, diverse group that shares the same viewpoint. Read a handy deeper dive here.

Even when a specific sock-puppet claim turns out to be false, the underlying tactic is real: in a 2026 defamation deposition, Elon Musk admitted under oath to operating two undisclosed burner accounts on X, confirming the practice happens even at the platform-owner level (Independent.com) And arguably, the @america account on Twitter/ X could be considered a sock-puppet account as well, more on that here.

Bot Networks

Automated bots can like, share, and post across social media at scale. When enough bots promote the same hashtag or content, it can trend quickly. Consequently drawing in real users who believe they’re engaging with an authentic movement, and giving the topic momentum that often outlasts the original push.

Coordinated Hashtag Campaigns

Groups may plan hashtag pushes at specific times, often during peak online activity. If enough accounts post simultaneously, the hashtag can climb trending charts on X formerly Twitter, attracting attention from journalists and mainstream media. These campaigns rely on the assumption that trending topics reflect genuine public interest, when in fact, it’s a carefully timed effort designed to manufacture attention.

Warning Signs of Organised Campaigns

So what can you look out for to distinguish ‘real’ opinion from astroturfing?Astroturfing is designed to mimic authentic engagement, but it usually leaves traces. A few red flags can help separate genuine public sentiment from manufactured noise.

Repeated Language: When multiple accounts post identical or near identical wording, it’s often a sign of a prearranged script. Genuine conversation tends to have natural variation in phrasing, while coordinated campaigns rely on repetition to push a message.

Sudden Engagement Spikes: An abrupt surge in likes, shares, or follower counts – especially on previously low-profile accounts can signal automated activity. Viral moments happen organically but a consistent, unexplained spike is more often a sign of manipulation.

Time-Stamped Coordination: If posts flood in within a narrow timeframe, especially across different accounts promoting the same message or hashtag, it’s a strong indicator of deliberate scheduling. This tactic is common in coordinated hashtag campaigns designed to game trending algorithms.

Stock/AI Profiles: Accounts using generic profile photos, AI-generated faces, or empty bios often lack a genuine identity. A quick reverse image search, AI image check or a glance at their posting history can reveal whether an account is authentic or part of a larger astroturfing effort.

Ethical and Societal Ramifications

Astroturfing distorts public perception by manufacturing widespread support or outrage that wasn’t really there to begin with. This manipulation can lead consumers, voters, or fans to make choices they wouldn’t have made under transparent conditions. Over time, repeated exposure to these tactics erodes trust in social media platforms, media, politics and online discourse more broadly (Woolley & Howard, 2019).

Impact on Democracy

Voters may be swayed by supposed public sentiment that’s been artificially engineered by paid operators, undermining the integrity of democratic processes.

Impact on Markets

Consumers buy into products, services, or artists on the strength of reviews and buzz that turn out to be bought rather than earned.

Impact on Social Fabric

People become increasingly cynical, suspecting that any popular online movement might be ‘fake.’ That scepticism ends up damaging genuine grassroots efforts as collateral damage.

Impact on Individual Perception

There’s a subtler cost too, and it’s the one the algorithm example above points to: even without a coordinated campaign, a feed that quietly narrows around one opinion can leave you certain you know ‘what everyone thinks’ when you’ve really just seen a loop of your own first reaction. Astroturfing manufactures consensus deliberately; algorithms can do it as a side effect, and the second version is harder to notice precisely because no one designed it maliciously.

Fighting Back Against Coordinated Misinformation

Astroturfing thrives in the grey areas of digital communication, but there are ways to push back.

Platform Responsibility

Tech companies have the power tpoimprove their detection systems for mass-created accounts and identical messaging (AI anyone?). Clear labelling of sponsored content and paid posts also helps users distinguish between authentic engagement and manipulation.

Regulatory Frameworks

Some jurisdictions require transparency in political advertising and social endorsements. But astroturfing remains difficult to regulate globally, it often operates just below the threshold of existing legal frameworks, and is frequently orchestrated via accounts based outside the jurisdictions trying to police it. There’s no clean fix for this. The two levers that do reach across borders are platform-level enforcement (imperfect, but it doesn’t stop at a national boundary the way regulation does) and growing cooperation between regulators and researchers to track coordinated campaigns across multiple platforms at once, rather than one country or one site at a time.

Public & Algorithmic Awareness

Recognising the tactics covered earlier, e.g. repeated language, sudden spikes, stock/ AI profiles helps us users question sudden waves of uniform praise or outrage rather than take them at face value. Platforms and regulators, even at their best, will never catch everything; an informed public is the last line of defence.

None of the above fully addresses the individual-level version from earlier, a feed that narrows around one opinion with no campaign behind it. That one has no institutional fix. The only real defence is a habit: actively seeking out other angles on a topic instead of assuming your feed is a representative sample of what people actually think.

So, what would I like you to take away from this, if it’s only one thing? It would be this question: Am I seeing what people think, or am I seeing what someone wants me to think people think?



Let’s see you for the next part, part 5!