Engineering Enthusiasm: Digital Astroturfing and the Manufacture of Popularity in Indian Cinema

By- Manshwi Anand

Abstract

Astroturfed digital campaigns in India’s contemporary film industry blurs the line between authentic audience support and covert promotion which eventually misleads the consumers leading to distortion of competition. Through manipulation of online visibility and perceived popularity, they undermine informed choice and fair market conditions, exposing gaps in existing consumer protection and competition frameworks in addressing algorithm-driven promotional practice.

Keywords

Astroturfing, Paid Fan Army, Artificial Amplification, Consumer Protection Act, 2019

Introduction

The theatrical release of major films in India today is preceded and overshadowed by a surge of online activity including trending hashtags, viral edits, mass positive reviews, and coordinated praise across social media. This creates an impression of overwhelming public enthusiasm even before the audience interacts with the work. While such activity may be attributed to passionate fan communities, evidence suggests that a certain part of this digital buzz may be as a result of strategically orchestrated paid campaigns operating behind the promotion of films. This phenomenon popularly known as ‘astroturfing’ blurs the boundary between genuine audience support and covert commercial promotion.

Artificial amplification of trends can influence consumer decision-making by projecting a misleading perception of quality of the work. Additionally, they may distort competition between simultaneously released films by manipulating algorithm-based visibility. Existing frameworks, including consumer protection doctrines and competition law addresses misleading advertisements and market distortion in traditional contexts but remain ill equipped to face decentralised, anonymised digital hype campaigns that sways public opinion.

Paid Fan Armies as Commercial Promotion

Digital fan activity surrounding film releases has traditionally been understood as spontaneous expression of audience enthusiasm. However, a more complex reality has emerged, where some support of a film is garnered by cultivated, or directly incentivised by producers and marketing agencies.

Paid campaigns deploy multi-layered tactics, including paid-hashtag campaigns and coordinated timings that push the name of the movie to top rankings on social media, creating illusionary virality that influences streaming algorithms and revenue. Secondly, offshore bot farms  generate fake interactions using proxy servers to evade detection. This eventually inflates followers counts and engagement rates to secure paid media placements or influencer tie-ups. Finally, review platforms receive a plethora of top reviews from incentivised accounts, scripted via google forms. This skews film ratings, misleading ticket buyers. Hence, these campaigns are driven by artificial promotional communication rather than purely expressive behaviour.

Unlike conventional advertisement, the origin of these campaigns isundisclosed. However, the output appears indistinguishable from genuine audience opinion, leveraging perceived peer endorsement.

Astroturfing and Consumer Protection Law

Under Section 2(42) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, films are classified as “services” hence, the regulations apply accordingly. Artificially manufactured digital hype surrounding films raises significant consumer protection concerns, as it distorts the informational environment in which the audiences decide to watch a film. Contemporary film viewers rely on online indicators, trending status, ratings, reviews, and perceived popularity to assess the quality of the film. When these indicators are covertly manipulated through paid campaigns, the resulting perception of approval may amount to misleading advertisement affecting consumer choice. 

Section 2(28) defines ‘misleading advertisement’as something that “gives a false guarantee to, or is likely to mislead the consumers as to the nature, substance, quantity or quality of such product or service”.  Artificial hype campaigns can indirectly create false guarantees and eventually mislead the film viewers of the quality of the film concerned. It eventually projects a film as widely acclaimed even when genuine reception differs. 

Beyond misrepresentation, inflated advertising undermines right to make informed choices, a foundational attribute of the  Indian consumer protection atmosphere. The statutory framework assumes that consumers can exercise autonomous judgement when provided with transparent information. However, paid mobilisation replaces neutral market signals with disguised promotional strategies. As popularity is rarely disclosed as advertising, it manipulates consumer evaluation as its source, leading to decisions based on deceptive perceptions.

In 2023, the Advertising Standards Council of India issued “Guidelines for Influencer Advertising in Digital Media” ,emphasising that the boundary between content and advertising in digital spaces is increasingly blurred in today’s era. The central principle underpinning the guidelines is transparency that is a need for a prominent disclosure. The guidelines also emphasise that consumers often encounter promotional messages without recognising their commercial intent, making the content inherently misleading and capable of exploiting consumers’ right to an informed choice.

However, paid fan campaigns circumvent these guidelines, as participants operate through personal accounts rather than identifiable influencer profiles, though the same transparency logic applies.  By concealing commercial connection, such campaigns exploit the credibility of authentic audience opinion, while avoiding disclosure obligations.

 Additionally, a practical challenge lies in attribution. Film production  encompass multiple stakeholders acting  through agents or subcontractors. Nonetheless, in Nikhil Jain v. Emami Limited,it was held that consumer protection liability stems from the holistic effect of commercial conduct rather than just formal authorship. Therefore, diffusion of roles does not preclude responsibility where cumulative conduct causes consumer deception. Applied to firms, accountability could, in theory, be based on overall market distortion, despite multiple actors. 

 However, this remains largely theoretical, as enforcing such liabilities generates significant evidentiary and procedural challenges. The absence of explicit statutory provisions surrounding astroturfed promotion exposes a regulatory gap between frameworks designed for overt advertising and contemporary strategies that influence behaviour through artificial consensus.  

Anti-Competitive Implications of Digital Hype

Beyond deception, manufactured hype campaigns raise strong competition law concerns, as they distort the level playing field within the film exhibition market. The contemporary film industry operates in a high-stake, time-sensitive environment, where revenues are reliant on a strong opening weekend. Visibility, perceived popularity, and social momentum function as critical competitive advantages. When such artificially engineered advantages are coordinated promotional amplification, they may alter market outcomes not through superior product quality but through manipulation of attention and discoverability.

A central concern is the distortion of market visibility. Social media platforms prioritise  trending and highly engaged content. Concentrated promotional activity can artificially elevate a film’s prominence across feeds, search results, and recommendations. Algorithms interpret heightened engagement as genuine demand and further amplify the same content, thereby reinforcing its visibility while simultaneously suppressing alternatives. As a result, smaller players lose visibility and comparable exposure, effectively denying market access which amounts to abuse of dominance as recognised in MCX Stock Exchange v. NSE.

A comparative lens emerges from the European jurisprudence on platform self-preferencing, most notably Google and Alphabet v Commission . In that case, the European Court of Justice upheld findings that a dominant search engine abused its position not by outright denying access to rivals, but by systematically favouring its own service through prominent placement while demoting competing services. The Court recognised that visibility in digital ecosystems functions as a critical competitive input when traffic flows are algorithmically steered, even formally accessible markets can become practically exclusionary.

 Drawing an analogy to film exhibition in the digital age, algorithmic amplification through concentrated marketing activity produces a comparable effect. Much like the “boxes” in Google’s search results that captured disproportionate user attention, promoted film content that occupies prime digital real estate i.e. top trends, autoplay previews, recommended lists, or sponsored placements masquerading as organic engagement diverts audience attention away from competing films. Crucially, this does not require an explicit refusal to host or display rival content. Instead, competitors remain technically present but are relegated to positions of negligible visibility, where user interaction is statistically unlikely

 Likewise, in Shamsher Kataria v. Honda Siel Cars India Ltd, the CCI held that practices that limit consumer choice and prevent fair competition violate competition norms. Extending this principle, campaigns of manufactured popularity can produce a comparable denial of meaningful consumer choice as seen above. This artificial constriction of choice undermines the foundation of competition law that is to preserve conditions in which market success flows from genuine consumer preference rather than structured artificial environment.

Conclusion

The rise of digitally orchestrated hype campaigns in the Indian film industry reflects a structural shift in how market success is manufactured and perceived. What appears as spontaneous enthusiasm may be a carefully engineered promotional strategy that blurs the line between genuine audience endorsement and covert commercial communication.

From a consumer protection perspective under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, artificially inflated trends, ratings, and reviews can amount to misleading advertisements by distorting the informational environment in which consumers make decisions. When paid digital mobilisation masquerades as authentic peer approval, it undermines transparency and erodes the right to informed choice.

From a competition law standpoint, manufactured digital visibility may distort market dynamics by manipulating algorithmic discoverability. In high-stakes theatrical markets, artificial amplification can confer disproportionate competitive advantages unrelated to merit. While existing jurisprudence under the Competition Act, 2002 provides conceptual tools to address abuse of dominance and market distortion, its application to algorithm-driven promotional ecosystems remains underdeveloped.

Ultimately, astroturfed promotion reveals a widening gap between traditional regulation and contemporary digital marketing realities. Bridging this requires clearer attribution standards, enhanced disclosure obligations, and a nuanced understanding of algorithmic influence so that both consumer autonomy and competitive fairness are preserved in the evolving digital marketplace.

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