Posted on 10/12/2007 4:27:43 AM PDT by Aussie Dasher
A CANDIDATE for the US presidency is being buoyed by a huge online campaign that may be a fake a grassroots movement organised by party staff.
YouTube footage of Texan Republican Senator Ron Paul, whose candidacy has been overshadowed in the media by competitors Rudi Giuliani, Fred Thompson and John McCain, has been viewed by tens of thousands of people in the last week.
As of 11am AEST today, a compilation of different clips of Senator Paul was the top rated video of the past 24 hours.
The clip had been viewed nearly 60,000 times since it was uploaded yesterday.
But it was not the only clip of the senator receiving kudos from YouTube users, with another 10 videos appearing in today’s list of the site’s 100 top rated recordings.
Of the 11 featured clips of Senator Paul, only one user uploaded more than one of them in the last 24 hours.
Head of Flinders University’s Department of American Studies Don De Bots told NEWS.com.au that it “sounded like” an astroturfing campaign.
Astroturfing is the term used to describe a fake grassroots campaign, in which members of an organisation create the illusion that “ordinary people” are behind the movement.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
I am SO shocked to read this. Astroturfing for Paul. Just amazing.
It's hard to believe those kinds of numbers in the first 24 hours. After a day or two, no biggie. Immediately after an upload is suspicious.
Senator?
I dunno. I’d never heard of him until last year...
In other news, scientists have learned that all water contains a property they are calling “wetness.”
"De Bots" is probably what are causing all the hits (end/sarcasm.) Seriously though, they could be using a click farm or bots to generate lots of hits.
A promotion!!! Senator Paul, kinda has a ring to it.
The obvious mistake in this article repeated several times doesn’t lend a lot of credibility to the writer.
I do think it is a grass roots movement. It’s just a very small grass roots movement.
To make up for the mistake in original article’s headline (”Senator”) would adding “(Ron Paul)” at the end of the thread title be the right fix?
IMO a description using “mold” seems more fitting than “grass”...
Depending on the video, it’s possible, but a video where a politician is speaking, not so much. “Sore-eee” Ron.
It is certainly possible to spambot YouTube to drive numbers up.
If that is happening, it’s very unlikely that it is the campaign doing it. More likely, some script kiddie with a deep bandwidth connection like at a university.
However, Ron Paul does have something like 55,000 Meetup members now, located in 24 countries. So some of the traffic might very well be an indication of international enthusiasm for his message. Many of the European and Brit young people really do like RP’s liberty and small-government message. They don’t like a nanny-state future and they recognize the problems with socialist government solutions.
I don’t find the article especially credible when they couldn’t even be bothered to verify that RP is a congressman, not a senator. And those interviews with the “expert”, well, he’s some nobody and they had a strange way of collating his responses. Funny he never bothered to mention to them that RP is a congressman.
Does not surprise me a bit.
Not worth the time to read it.
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