| Exactly how many of Rick Perry's followers on Twitter are make believe?
On Friday, the Rick Perry campaign was outed for astroturfing on Twitter. Astroturfing is creating a fake account to lie about who you are. For example, imagine I created an account and called myself "RachelGriffin85" when clearly, my name is Phillip Martin, then I used this fake account "RachelGriffin85" to spread lies and have my friends help me spread lies about a political opponent. That practice is known as "astroturfing."Rick Perry's campaign was caught astroturfing on Twitter. From the Statesman, "On Twitter, it's not always easy to tell who's a part of the campaign": Noam Krig, a Texas State University alumnus who was a social media intern for the Texans for Rick Perry campaign, has been posting a heavy stream of pro-Perry and anti-White links on a Twitter account at twitter.com/weRaustin, an account he's run for at least a year. He also appears to be behind other Texas city accounts like weRhouston and weRsanantonio. But it's not so easy to figure out; the accounts list no name and offer no link to an affiliated website that would identify Krig as their owner.
Perry's campaign has insisted that Krig is just a volunteer and no longer works with the campaign. Yet, only ten days ago he was checking in on Gowalla at the Rick Perry campaign headquarters. Krig worked for the Perry campaign when he made the accounts. He also, for what it's worth, The offending accounts -- weRaustin, weRhouston, weRelpaso, weRdallas, and weRsanantonio -- all have the exact same branding and identical bio information, changed only by what city the account is purportedly representing. Each of these accounts were used to spread Rick Perry's messages, and the messages of numerous other accounts the Perry campaign is (most likely) astroturfing. The end result is the creation of a fake grassroots presence that does not exist. It is clear that Rick Perry has nearly 30,000 followers on Twitter. But how many of those people are real, and how many are make believe? When you use platforms like TweetDeck, HootSuite, or even a simple search on Twitter, most of the people writing about Rick Perry are his own astroturf accounts. Every now and then, Dave Carney -- writing from what I am 99% certain is his own fake Twitter account, @freeusfromthem -- goes through and RTs a whole bunch of people to pretend there's buzz, but that's it. Over the weekend, I'll be highlighting other numerous accounts the Rick Perry campaign is (likely) astroturfing. Rick Perry's claim to social media fame is that he has a lot of make believe friends that support him. I think it's time we started calling him out for being the liar that he is. Consider it my small effort to help restore sanity. |
