Astroturf is fake grass. Astroturfing is fake grass-roots advocacy.
As Brains on Fire reports, the Wall Street Journal has uncovered what looks like an incredibly inept piece of astroturfing by the DCI Group, possibly on behalf of client Exxon.
It’s one thing to create a video for a corporation or interest group and be aboveboard about it … disclosing any interests or loyalties. It’s another to try to pass off propaganda as citizen-generated media. Especially when the result is so incredibly inane.
The video is incredibly clumsy – attempting to portray Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth as incredibly boring without even attempting to refute its thesis.
Whoa. To my mind, that’s an endorsement of the documentary’s message … and another reason to see it.
Just think of the mindset that goes into a production like this: what a incredibly insultingly low view of people the creator of this piece must have. In essence, what this video is saying is that climate change might be happening, but it’s boring. Go on, stupid citizens, amuse yourself to death.
Whoever did this is evil. Whoever did this is arrogant.
Ultimately, whoever did this is more foolish than he or she thought people are.
[tags] video, youtube, astroturf, astroturfing, propaganda, PR, Exxon, oil, al gore, global warming, climate, inconvenient truth, john koetsier [/tags]