Astroturfing is the manufacture of apparent grassroots public support where none organically exists — named for artificial turf standing in for the real thing. A political campaign, corporation, or advocacy group funds or coordinates a network of accounts, commentators, or local-sounding organizations to generate what looks like independent, widespread public sentiment, when it's actually centrally organized and often paid for.
In digital media, this usually takes the form of coordinated social accounts posting near-identical talking points within a short window, PR firms placing op-eds under the bylines of "concerned citizens," or advocacy groups with generic, community-sounding names that are in fact fully funded by a single industry or political interest. The goal is always the same: make a manufactured position look like a spontaneous, organic consensus.
Astroturfing exploits the social proof heuristic — the mental shortcut that treats apparent widespread agreement as evidence of truth or legitimacy. If it looks like many independent people have reached the same conclusion, that consensus feels more persuasive than any single argument could be on its own, even when the underlying facts haven't changed. This is closely tied to the bandwagon effect, where people are more willing to adopt a position once it appears to already be popular.
It's also difficult to detect in the moment. A reader scrolling through comments or local news coverage has no easy way to verify who's actually behind a given account or organization, so the manufactured appearance of grassroots support can shape public perception — and even downstream news coverage that treats the apparent groundswell as a real story — well before anyone traces the funding back to its source.