O astroturfing como um processo comunicativo: a manifestação de um público simulado, a mobilização de públicos e as lógicas de influência na opinião pública

Abstract

The present paper addresses the astroturfing, understood as a practice of propaganda that creates a demonstration of a simulated public. Despise the growing importance of the subject in the contemporary world, the few communication studies on the topic usually follow an approach dominated by a deterministic bias, in which generalizations about reasons and effects evoke a linear causality grounded on unilateralism. Unlike those, this dissertation reflects on the practice from a relational perspective of communication, understanding it as a complex attempt to influence public opinion. With that in mind, we explored the propaganda literature and identified some logics that are presents in the astroturfing. After that, we reflected, starting from the theoretical contribution of the frame and the event, on the way those logics are materialized in the dynamics of the practice. This dissertation concludes with an analysis of the Eu sou da Lapa case, realizing how the logics identified are present in this specific episode.