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Fake Grass and the Cyber City [1]
An investigation of astroturfing on weblogs

word count: 1368

We hear people celebrating online democracy, the idea that the internet is a form of that envisioned ‘global village’ that Marshall McLuhan championed, but the reality is that it involves commercial enterprise also. What makes the internet such an enticing prospect for marketers, is that it is visual, like the television, informative, like newspapers, and personal, like the radio. It combines elements of what makes each medium powerful, and requires that a consumer be active while engaging with it. This activity causes online citizens to seek out information that interests them, allowing unprecedented market segmentation. No longer do businesses need to actively seek out and inform their target markets, as this is done for them in cyberspace. All they need to do is have a presence on the pages that their markets are likely to seek out, giving rise to the practice of astroturfing.

Astroturfing is a public relations term that occurs when a firm seeks to deliberately engineer the appearance of spontaneous, grassroots support for their interests, or against their competitors. My vlog this semester has sought to explore this hot issue, using a stylised approach based on Sex and the City to create interest. This allowed me to introduce humour at the beginning and conclusion of each vlog, and made each entry ‘branded’ as being part of a series. This standardised approach that I used meant that each of my vlogs is instantly recognizable as my own, but their self containment mean that it is not necessary to watch the complete series of vlogs to understand any one entry.

This self containment was an important concept to me, as I did not want my vlogs to suffer from a restless, typically active online consumer who may not have the patience to view a seven part series. I wanted an internet user to be able to ‘happen’ across one of my vlogs, be entertained, but not necessarily compelled to have to watch another twenty minutes of video to understand what it was they were viewing. Understanding that instant gratification is often a prerequisite for online enjoyment, I kept that in mind while constructing my entries. However, other vlogs constructed by the class do operate as a narrative, and they have done this quite successfully. Shannon’s in particular could not be viewed out of order, or removed from each other, as they function as a unified body of content.

For my vlogs to function as a series, I thought that is was important for them to be easily located near each other. When the Cacofonix site would not put my vlogs all together in the one location, I created a blog page that contained hyperlinks to all my entries. This enabled me to provide one single point of reference when directing people to my vlogs. Many other vloggers from the class have since also constructed similar pages, and I quite like Dan’s idea of putting links to earlier entries in every video he posts.

My vlogs themselves exist almost entirely of voiceovers and accompanying footage, and this was an important style element for my vlog. Each entry had to have the appearance of my ‘investigation’, and so each were constructed with the idea that what you could hear was my thoughts, as discussed what the answer could look like to each question my videos proposed. Because it is me asking the questions in a personal way, showing a lot of self-footage was necessary, and it became a little less anonymous than I would have liked.

I think that my production values did improve across this semester, and one thing in particular really stands to mind as changing over the weeks. I began with quite long entries, but realized that shorter, snappier clips were more suited to this medium. Episode one was at first almost five minutes, but I realised that this just didn't suit my style of vlog entry. I then cut it down immediately, and from then on aimed for around three minutes or less. This was largely influenced by my own attitudes in viewing other classmate’s vlogs- I eagerly would play ones that were around two minutes, but would find not be as keen to view the longer entries. Jay’s and Hedda’s really stand out as good examples of this, as they both have had a lot of really great, short vlogs that I was immediately keen to view. These vlogs greatly influenced the decisions I made about my own vlog’s length.

I had set out to use more flash within my vlogs, but found that it better to use it to complement, not compete, with my investigation. My first and last entries were constructed entirely in flash, with animation used sparingly in roughly half of my other vlogs, my favourite one being Ronald McDonald from Episode Four. I really like my use of flash in the title sequence and finale, as I think this is a good way of ‘framing’ the series, but doesn’t take too much away from what is being said.

The final vlog is also interactive, allowing the viewer to go back and view any other entry. The buttons are ‘grass’ circles, with numbers that flash a different colour of the rainbow for each numbered vlog. I like the way that Christina’s vlogs are defined by interactivity, and her vlog made me want to incorporate a small element of that within my own. Shan-Chun Chou’s vlog used flash really nicely too, and the interactive component of hers works really well.

I think having a strong first and final post is really important, and so for my final post I tried to really connect all my vlogs together. I am visually connected to the grass that I am shown laying on, and I am pictured ‘thinking’ about my other vlogs in a thought bubble. Denise has a great final vlog, and her approach was to summarise the series while also providing new content.

My largest challenge for this project was the time component involved in creating each vlog, as I had to set aside one to two days each week to construct each post. I felt it was important to approach this project in a routine way with weekly entries, to ensure that I gave myself the best opportunity to bring fresh ideas, thought and approach to each vlog. On reflection, I am glad that I did have a lot of vlogging ‘discipline’, because I don’t think I could have done the investigative aspect of it justice if I had tried to film it all in a week.

What I would do differently next time would be to perhaps produce something that is more conventionally a ‘vlog’- mine has the overall appearance and feeling of mini-movies, not really vlog entries. I am shown typing up my findings on astroturfing, but this is not something that I am actually doing. On the other hand, Liana was actually baking brownies, shopping, and all the other things featured in her clips. Her vlog in this sense is chronicling activities that she is actually doing; mine operates more like a mediated presentation of an essay. In some ways, it is ironic that my vlog- Fake Grass- in itself is somewhat fake.

If I was to keep a vlog in future, it would probably have more flash, less voiceovers, and I would document something that I was actually doing. In this sense, Natasha’s vlog is a real inspiration to me, because she is looking at ways of changing the world, and filming herself actually doing it. I think she is a great example of what vlogging can achieve, as it documents ways of changing the world from the perspective of someone who is doing it.

I am grateful for the opportunity to have spent the semester thinking about astroturfing, as to me this is an extremely important issue that would benefit from exposure. Because this was an issue I feel passionately about, I enjoyed spending one to two days each week creating each episode, so while it took a lot of time, it was a worthwhile pursuit. I hope that viewers would understand from viewing my vlog, that while the internet has a great potential to unite, connect and inform geographically diverse citizens, it also holds unprecedented access to citizens that global brands would view as enticing.

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As a postscript to my critical analysis, I want to say thank you to Peter for thinking up this project-- it has been such a unique and interesting assignment, and I really have gained a lot from it. My social life may never recover, but there's always youTube if it doesn't!!