Popular by design

This has been the week for hoaxes!  I reported a few days about about the hoax study about Internet Explorer users having lower IQ scores than normal and discussed media pranks in general.  Now  we have reports of companies which you pay to  increase your Twitter Feed’s status (i.e. number of followers) .  $25 gets you at least 1,000 followers and $45 gets you 2,000.  Newt Gingrich used these companies to boost his Twitter followership up to 1.3 million.

This is related to the  process called Astroturfing – fabricating the appearance of a grassroots following.  While astroturfing on Twitter is as new a Twitter, astroturfing has been around for a while and has many differs versions.

A few months back it was exposed that radio talk shows (the blogosphere of the pre-internet days) hired actors to call in to talk shows to support the show or present a strawman to give the host something to rail against.  If you are interested, the Premiere On Call website is back up and you can register for an audition.

About William Ashton

I'm an associate professor in the Behavioral Sciences Department and the Director of the York College Honors Program. I'm a social psychologist and currently my research project is in attribution theory, blame and sexual assault. I teach Social Psych, I/O Psych, Organizational Behavior and Research Methods.
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