This paper explores the creation of an astroturf group, which is a fake grassroots movement, and looks at the strategies that were used to influence EU policies. The case under scrutiny is the Responsible Energy Citizen Coalition. This alleged citizen movement launched a campaign to influence two European Parliament reports regarding shale gas exploration in 2012. A quantitative text analysis offers insights regarding the astroturf group's communication strategy in comparison to 39 other interest groups who published position papers on the issue. This study shows how the astroturf group's communication is aligned with that of the organizations, which were behind its creation. Furthermore, the distinction between lobbying success and lobbying influence is discussed and a correspondence analysis shows how the astroturf group might have contributed to the success of the pro-shale coalition on the outcome of one of the two policy proposals.

Astroturf lobbying refers to the simulation of grassroots support for or against a public policy. The objective of this tactic is for private interests to pretend they have public support for their cause. However, omitting to disclose the real sponsor of a message renders the communication unauthentic and undermines democratic and pluralist values. This article seeks to develop a method to detect astroturf movements based on emphasis framing analysis. The hypothesis is that astroturf groups employ different frames than genuine grassroots movements to comply with the private interests they truly represent. The results of the case study on the shale gas exploration debate in the United States show that astroturf groups used frames that differed significantly from authentic non-governmental organizations, which allowed their detection.

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This paper seeks to shed light on astroturf lobbying, a strategy that recently invaded the European public. Its purpose is to simulate citizen support for a specific issue whilst keeping its identity secret. The public sphere is envisaged as a constellation of issues around which gravitate interest groups that try to influence the debate, and doing so by carefully frame their messages. In the case of the shale gas debate in the EU, the question that emerged is to see whether astroturf groups convey the economic frames used by the oil and gas companies they represent, or if they mobilised environmental frames such as shale gas opponents. Results show that the astroturf group mostly emphasized the safety of hydraulic fracturing and tried to counter the environmental frames of competing NGOs.

This paper presents the results of a study which aims at understanding how social media platforms influence the formation of opinions of young adults (18–25) through content personalization. To do this, we problematize the so-called “filter bubble” phenomenon. We first go back to the literature and propose to depart from trying to assess the existence of and quantify the presence of filter bubbles on social media. We propose to focus on news use and access to content diversity related to political opinion formation and the impact of algorithms on the presence of said diversity. We then propose a theoretical framework—Activity Theory (AT)—for the understanding modeling the diversity of practices as well as the discourses regarding these practices of youth on social media regarding access to the diversity of content and news. In particular, the division of phenomena in three levels (operations, actions, and activities) is used to build up a canvas for a model that will be tested enriched with the new data. The so-called “pyramidal model” is also discussed and applied to our research topic. The third part of this paper summarizes the methods used to gather the data through a method we call “online in praxis interviews.” We then present the results, which show a relative knowledge of the mechanisms of content recommendations on social media as well as the tactics young people use to increase or mitigate them.