In organizing circles, “astroturf” refers to the practice of creating the simulation of a grassroots groundswell through robo calls, highly choreographed postcard campaigns, etc. People on Capitol Hill can tell it’s happening when they suddenly get pounds of mail that’s identical.

My friend Jed Miller raises some interesting (related) questions about using Twitter as a lobbying tool. Seems the Sunlight Foundation is urging people to press the seventeen Twitter-using US senators to sign onto a particular bill.

Jed asks:

Twitter’s peer-to-peer, right? Do we really want to single out the decision-makers in the virtual room? If we tweet-mob @JohnCornyn and @Barbara_Boxer don’t we hasten the blown-vein moment that grassroots email to Congress has reached? Where what was once more intimate access is just another crowd to be herded via retractable rope-barriers and CRM filters?

I think this could turn advocacy tweets from nightingales into woodpeckers. I hope I’m overreacting.

(He’s not alone, of course, if you look at the comments on Sunlight’s blog post.)

Jed, I don’t think you’re overreacting, I think you are raising important cautions.

There are new tools — we need to develop new norms for how to use them.