Astroturfing by Media

Zorya · 02-06-2019 5:21pm #1

Word Usage Frequency in the New York Times between 1970 and 2017

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D72geE1WsAEwLJK.jpg

Astroturfing is top-down manipulation of public awareness to make it appear that issues result organically from grassroots movements.

Political lobbies use it along with others, like advertisers. They use various media streams, mostly digital nowadays, to create false impressions.

In political science, it is defined as the process of seeking electoral victory or legislative relief for grievances by helping political actors find and mobilize a sympathetic public, and is designed to create the image of public consensus where there is none

~ Wikipedia

It can be used to promote action, but more often to inhibit action. ''Everyone'' believes x or y, one is consistently told, so if one doesn't believe what ''everyone'' believes, then one feels afraid or compelled to stay quiet.

Also

Powerful lobbyists and political movements (can)activate small groups of aggrieved citizens to have an exaggerated importance in public policy debates

~ Wikipedia

This subject came to mind today when I saw this interesting set of graphs. Yes, yes, it's America, the New York Times, but it happens here too. I just do not have the tool to generate word usage frequency on Irish media. It would be interesting to do so, if such a tool exists.

Of course, some might say these words or phrases are new and so appear more often, but they are not all new. Safe Space goes back to 1960s, for example. Many of the words and terms here are decades old and look what has happened in the last handful of years.

This is - in my opinion - an illustration of ''identity politics'', and the astroturfing of issues onto the public. Divide, conquer. Agitate. Manipulate.

I thought it was interesting and you can do it yourself at this link (yes, yes, for the NY times only...but if anyone can do this elsewhere I would be interested)
https://media-analytics.op-bit.nz/timeline

Zorya · 02-06-2019 5:25pm

Forgot this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU

Poor Uncle Tom · 02-06-2019 5:32pm

Shoite!

Guy:Incognito · 02-06-2019 5:32pm

Whod have thought usage of a word only made up in recent years, like mansplaining, would have a spike in recent years......

[Ralph Wiggum voice] I play 5 a side on astro turf [Ralph Wiggum voice]

Zorya · 02-06-2019 5:36pm

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

Whod have thought usage of a word only made up in recent years, like mansplaining, would have a spike in recent years......

[Ralph Wiggum voice] I play 5 a side on astro turf [Ralph Wiggum voice]

Yah, Guy, I mentioned that, but look at most of the others. Go on, I dare ya.

Zorya · 02-06-2019 5:41pm

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

Whod have thought usage of a word only made up in recent years, like mansplaining, would have a spike in recent years......

[Ralph Wiggum voice] I play 5 a side on astro turf [Ralph Wiggum voice]

Just to make it easy for you...
Sexism
Patriarchy
Misogyny
Feminism
Racism
Whiteness
Queer
Gender
AntiMuslim
Xenophobia
Bigotry
Intolerance
Stereotypes
Inequality
Hateful
Insult
Stigmatised
Inclusion

and so on and so forth. Hope I don't have to do the etymology research for you too, so you know the provenance and date of common usage of each of these rather normal word examples.

branie2 · 02-06-2019 5:43pm

I don't know, I never smoked astroturf

Guy:Incognito · 02-06-2019 6:07pm

Zorya wrote: »

Yah, Guy, I mentioned that, but look at most of the others. Go on, I dare ya.

Mentions of aids spiked in the 80's and early 90's I assume from the graphs? Again, hardly surprising.

All of the, from a glance seem to mirror public interest and usage. I suppose if someone wants to turn that around and say its the other way around they are free to make that argument. But its one that could be made for anything.

Seems like reverse engineering an issue tbh.

Guy:Incognito · 02-06-2019 6:10pm

branie2 wrote: »

I don't know, I never smoked astroturf

Theres too much of the little rubber balls nowadays, theyve ruined the good stuff.

Hamsterchops · 02-06-2019 6:11pm

Lockdown

Now there's a word that has really spiked (worldwide) in recent years.

Guy:Incognito · 02-06-2019 6:13pm

Hamsterchops wrote: »

Lockdown

Now there's a word that has really spiked (worldwide) in recent years.

I'd say its on its 2nd peak after a trough in the 2000's.

70's and 80's films and tv loved putting cities , jails, police stations etc on lockdown.:)

Guy:Incognito · 02-06-2019 6:14pm

The Unhappy Wanderer wrote: »

People still read mainsteam media in 2019? Wow.

I know man, right? The guys on youtube are the only ones that speak the truth dude.

Guy:Incognito · 02-06-2019 6:40pm

The Unhappy Wanderer wrote: »

The Guardian literally begs me for money every time I'm on their site. Fckin pathetic lol.

Whereas the company you work for gives its product free to its customers?

biko · 02-06-2019 6:45pm

Journalists are not your friends.

The work by some of them is important, maybe even crucial, but they consider you a story at best, an enemy at worst.

Hamsterchops · 02-06-2019 6:45pm

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

I'd say its on its 2nd peak after a trough in the 2000's.

70's and 80's films and tv loved putting cities , jails, police stations etc on lockdown.:)

Point being that it's spread from being a US term to world-wide usage, any country that has a crisis situation now goes into lockdown, it's even used here, which is a very recent addition to our lexicon here in Ireland

kowloon · 02-06-2019 7:56pm

The one that I find most interesting is 'equality', look at the shape of it.

Skylinehead · 02-06-2019 8:02pm

Thing becomes popular: News outlet mentions thing.

More at 10, now onto sports and weather.

Patty Hearst · 02-06-2019 8:03pm

Some more here

'Whiteness'

'Non Binary/Gender Fluid/ Non Conforming'

'Privilege'

Zorya · 02-06-2019 8:14pm

Skylinehead wrote: »

Thing becomes popular: News outlet mentions thing.

More at 10, now onto sports and weather.

Like sex? Women? More popular than in the 70s? You have obviously never seen a nice lad in flares.

Anyways, interesting spike in President if you check it out. More spiky now than when Lewinski was giving Oval Office blow jobs or the Bushes were going to war. And apparently we have a waning interest in Money. Should tell that to all the poor sods sitting in tailbacks every week day morning.

Skylinehead · 02-06-2019 8:22pm

Zorya wrote: »

Like sex? Women? More popular than in the 70s? You have obviously never seen a nice lad in flares.

Anyways, interesting spike in President if you check it out. More spiky now than when Lewinski was giving Oval Office blow jobs or the Bushes were going to war. And apparently we have a waning interest in Money. Should tell that to all the poor sods sitting in tailbacks every week day morning.

Sex is one thing, talking about sex is another.

Stuff like discrimination and offensive are up and down plenty, not seeing much of a correlation here other than "here's the in thing".

Zorya · 02-06-2019 8:27pm

Skylinehead wrote: »

Sex is one thing, talking about sex is another.

Funny enough it seems people are having way less sex now. And yet talking about it more? And women? Feminism should not have spiked suddenly in the last couple of years, or racism. There is much less inequality or actual racism now than in previous decades. Manufacturing discord. Whatshername throwing in the golden apple.

Nobelium · 02-06-2019 8:52pm

biko wrote: »

Journalists are not your friends.

The work by some of them is important, maybe even crucial, but they consider you a story at best, an enemy at worst.

This is true, but worse than that, the ever decreasing circle of people worldwide that that pay their wages and dictate what they write are even worse.

I'm contuinley searching for neutral sources of news, where you are just presented with all the facts, good and bad, and allowed to make your own mind up. Intead of continuely being presented with half a story, half the facts and a massive dose of what opinion your allowed to to have.

Any suggestions for decent news sources and independent journalists / blogs always welcome.

Nobelium · 02-06-2019 9:08pm

Zorya wrote: »

Forgot this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU

worth watching, thanks

Nobelium · 02-06-2019 9:11pm

Zorya wrote: »

Word Usage Frequency in the New York Times between 1970 and 2017

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D72geE1WsAEwLJK.jpg

good checklist, if an article is promoting these words, there's a good chance it's light on facts and heavy on spin.

Zorya · 02-06-2019 9:14pm

Nobelium wrote: »

worth watching, thanks

Yeah I don't agree with everything she says but I think the general idea of manipulated consensus, concern, issues etc. is a reasonable likelihood. Real things are ignored. It's kind of like the way popular music is a totally manipulated area.

Junkyard Tom · 02-06-2019 9:23pm

Rather than being an unfortunate consequence of the media - manipulation of the public consciousness is one of its functions.

meeeeh · 02-06-2019 9:26pm

Zorya wrote: »

Forgot this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU

Did she at the end just explain Trump strategy by dismissing media, Muller or whatever else instead of rebuffing what they are saying.

Anyway it's no doubt that topics covered related to words there are more dominant especially in liberal media. But I am also certain that if you checked conservative media like Fox or Breidbart certain other words would dominate. To me it more feels like we are reaching saturation of certain topics. It will change in a while. Political movements of seventies were replaced by greed of eghties, anti communism of nineties by consumerism and then economic crash. These things go in waves.

ILoveYourVibes · 02-06-2019 10:32pm

FAKE NEWS

riffmongous · 02-06-2019 10:40pm

Yeah check how the use of certain words has changed on AH in the last years, like Leftist, Liberal etc

ToddyDoody · 02-06-2019 11:20pm

The media is predatory.

Society is predatory.

It's really stupid in reality, stemming from an inability to hold conflicting but equally valid viewpoints.

Zorya · 03-06-2019 7:39am

meeeeh wrote: »

Anyway it's no doubt that topics covered related to words there are more dominant especially in liberal media. But I am also certain that if you checked conservative media like Fox or Breidbart certain other words would dominate. To me it more feels like we are reaching saturation of certain topics. It will change in a while. Political movements of seventies were replaced by greed of eghties, anti communism of nineties by consumerism and then economic crash. These things go in waves.

I don't know about Fox or Breitbart, one is not print media, so maybe words cannot be counted (?) and Breitbart is not mainstream (as far as I know). It would be better to compare NYT with say Washington Times or The Wall STreet Journal.

I actually think if it was possible to check these papers that the same words would dominate, because (imo) the divisiveness and discord is manufactured and manipulated by all sides.

I don't see ''waves'' as such in the word count illustrated, and note those words were chosen by a commentator fomenting much the same grievance as they complain about. I see big sudden surges. Is one supposed to believe that the ordinary person in the street started ruminating on ''whiteness'' all of a sudden in 2015 so much so that they were referencing it 2 and a half times more frequently than the previous year? Or that between 2015 and 2017 the ordinary people were talking twice as much about feminism? Or that concern for injustice doubled between 2012 and 2017? Or that between 2015 and 2017 the use of the word queer on the streets doubled?
(I mean who even says ''whiteness'' or ''queer'' in ordinary chat? Regular people are hopefully not so obsessed with the helpless colour of other people or their sexuality to require doubling or trebling of media reference to same.)

It is my opinion that it is top down manipulation of public interest. Who are writing these articles? That is an interesting question. Who tells them the subject matters they should write on? In any media, right, left, middle.

Wish I knew what words to google to find similar tools for local media or even other media in US. I have tried lots of different search terms but nothing comes back.

meeeeh · 03-06-2019 10:14am

I said different topics come to the fore at different times. That list includes the words people use now. Body positivity is one of them for example but word from the similar area that is not used at all anymore is 'size 0'. To actually make any relevant analysis you would have to compare all the words through time not just few selected ones that we know are used more often now and might not be used at all in ten years time. Is that astro turfing? Maybe. Or maybe it's just a movement that will die down in few years like hippies did.

RandomName2 · 03-06-2019 10:23am

Zorya wrote: »

and so on and so forth. Hope I don't have to do the etymology research for you too, so you know the provenance and date of common usage of each of these rather normal word examples.

I was going to say that this was unnecessarily hostile, but then I saw Guy:Incognito complaining that Aids had a spike in the 80s, while ignoring the climb in relation to common usage words (like diversity or gender), so I hereby retract the complaint.

Zorya · 03-06-2019 10:25am

meeeeh wrote: »

I said different topics come to the fore at different times. That list includes the words people use now. Body positivity is one of them for example but word from the similar area that is not used at all anymore is 'size 0'. To actually make any relevant analysis you would have to compare all the words through time not just few selected ones that we know are used more often now and might not be used at all in ten years time. Is that astro turfing? Maybe. Or maybe it's just a movement that will die down in few years like hippies did.

I agree. It is not very scientific. It is biased. And some of the words are newish. But what makes it interesting is that many of the words are old, some political theory or social science style terms are several decades old, and there have been surges in frequency among very ordinary words like women or sex or feminism. I just think it's interesting, that's all, I know it's not rigorous science. It is fun and interesting to look at the analytics of random words on the link.
I also do think we are manipulated by media via astroturfing, of course it might be a question of how much - but maybe significantly. Also it is a method used by advertsers, political forces, social policy makers etc. I think it is worth keeping in mind.

Zorya · 03-06-2019 10:28am

RandomName2 wrote: »

I was going to say that this was unnecessarily hostile, but then I saw Guy:Incognito complaining that Aids had a spike in the 80s, while ignoring the climb in relation to common usage words (like diversity or gender), so I hereby retract the complaint.

Uh... thanks, I guess

Is that a reverse engineered insult sandwich?

Bob Harris · 03-06-2019 10:47am

Optics. A word you'd hear occasionally in the pub in relation to spirit measures. Now it's all about good and bad optics and it's everywhere.

Guy:Incognito · 03-06-2019 11:44am

RandomName2 wrote: »

I was going to say that this was unnecessarily hostile, but then I saw Guy:Incognito complaining that Aids had a spike in the 80s, while ignoring the climb in relation to common usage words (like diversity or gender), so I hereby retract the complaint.

Complaining?

I looked at a graph that showed aids mentions spiking during the time when large numbers of people were dying of aids. Then dropping off when drugs were developed allowing people to live with aids and said as much. Is "complaining" really the word you meant?

Astroturfing by Media

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