Astroturfing: media literacy example

Astroturfing is what politicians or businesspeople are doing if they create something which pretends to come from ordinary people (or grass roots) and it's actually a product of Public Relations. This isn't exactly new, but one of the latest manifestations is on http://www.youtube.com, where a video mocking Al Gore's An inconvenient truth (film about global warming) turned out not to be by a 29 year old Californian with a profile on Myspace.com, but a PR firm which included Exxon amongst its clients. You can find the film by searching youtube for "al gore" penguins
See also: Ayres, C. (2006) "Sick [sic] lobbying is behind penguin spoof of Al Gore." The Times, 5 August. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2299550,00.html [Added later - just noticed that on the LexisNexis database the headline is "Slick lobbying..." which sounds more likely to me, but I suppose either will do ;-)]

Photo by Sheila Webber: Grass, Roma Street Parklands, Brisbane, Australia, July 2006