Does it count as astroturfed if a publisher sends a prerelease copy to a media outlet, and the media outlet reviews it? When a PR firm markets a nice story to the media?
So, on /r/television - at least 50%, probably more, of popular posts/comments that advertise a particular show are 'organic', as in made by actual users OR content-agnostic repost bots. Some of those posts are links to news sites publishing PR material, though. And no doubt some posts/comments are explicit 'astroturfing'/advertising, although what the proportion is. You have to keep in mind, hundreds of millions of people watch television, and a solid 5% of those want to discuss that on the internet, and will enthusiastically post/upvote/comment - 'astroturfing' has to either have a lot of volume and subtlety to beat that, or function in a less direct and less "astroturfed" way. The same goes for politics, and the accusations of 'russian bots' or 'liberal bots' - they aren't bots, they are the millions of politics-obsessed normal 100iq people.
My feeling is that there are a ton of people "working" as trend setters, writing early posts on topics trying to set the tone for further engagement.
These "people" are a small minority but since they are aware of when things are released they can be first on the ball, kind of like pre-release copies are sent out to favourably inclined reviewers.
How much of this niche is captured by “influencers”? I get the impression that advertisers try to leverage existing following, maybe openly (sponsorships) or maybe not.
I think these are slightly different things. There are the influencers lending their real name to a product to give the impression that "high status" people are interested/like the product, and then there are the staff/bots etc who are instantly there cheering on various (semi)pseudonymous platforms, trying to give the impression that the masses are positive/excited about the product, that the conversations about the product is positive/excited and that there is a conversation/engagement.
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Notes -
Does it count as astroturfed if a publisher sends a prerelease copy to a media outlet, and the media outlet reviews it? When a PR firm markets a nice story to the media?
So, on /r/television - at least 50%, probably more, of popular posts/comments that advertise a particular show are 'organic', as in made by actual users OR content-agnostic repost bots. Some of those posts are links to news sites publishing PR material, though. And no doubt some posts/comments are explicit 'astroturfing'/advertising, although what the proportion is. You have to keep in mind, hundreds of millions of people watch television, and a solid 5% of those want to discuss that on the internet, and will enthusiastically post/upvote/comment - 'astroturfing' has to either have a lot of volume and subtlety to beat that, or function in a less direct and less "astroturfed" way. The same goes for politics, and the accusations of 'russian bots' or 'liberal bots' - they aren't bots, they are the millions of politics-obsessed normal 100iq people.
My feeling is that there are a ton of people "working" as trend setters, writing early posts on topics trying to set the tone for further engagement.
These "people" are a small minority but since they are aware of when things are released they can be first on the ball, kind of like pre-release copies are sent out to favourably inclined reviewers.
How much of this niche is captured by “influencers”? I get the impression that advertisers try to leverage existing following, maybe openly (sponsorships) or maybe not.
I think these are slightly different things. There are the influencers lending their real name to a product to give the impression that "high status" people are interested/like the product, and then there are the staff/bots etc who are instantly there cheering on various (semi)pseudonymous platforms, trying to give the impression that the masses are positive/excited about the product, that the conversations about the product is positive/excited and that there is a conversation/engagement.
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