Understanding why people believe the things they believe is core to understanding the phenomenon of fake news and disinformation. And helping people become more information and media literate (think the Inform level of the IAP2 Spectrum) is core to public engagement and, frankly, the future of democracy. Knowing that it’s ...
read more →
When determining how to ensure effective public participation, it should be noted that public participation is no less than the bedrock of a functioning democracy. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the U.S.
Constitution, said, “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of ...
read more →
Most rational people hate conflict; it’s uncomfortable, we can’t really control it, so we do everything we can to avoid it. Problem is, the U.S. is a nation in greater conflict now than ever before – at least in modern history. 81 million people on one side, 74 million on ...
read more →
As vaccines become more widespread, we’ll all slowly re-emerge from this forced hibernation and gradually start meeting face to face again. But communicating and connecting online is here to stay and part of our collective futures, so maximizing its effectiveness is a wise thing to do. Humans are social creatures ...
read more →
Edelman is a global communication firm that has tracked trends in public trust for the past 20 years. Their annual trust barometer measures public trust around four institutions: big business, media, non-governmental organization and government. Their data and analysis has been a goldmine for informing the work that we do ...
read more →
Abraham Lincoln is the guy who said, “… you may fool people for a time; you can fool a part of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” I’m confident that lies have been around since language was invented, but saying things ...
read more →
As long as we’re on the subject of reducing useless language, let’s see if we can all promise to at least try to move some of these to the recycling bin.
Much of the communication that comes out of government institutions reads and sounds like it was written by a committee of Baptist coroners. I’ve been reminded of that because I’ve filled my outside recycling container several times in the past few weeks – cleaning out old client documents and files ...
read more →
The work of government is complex and it’s hard for us mere mortals to understand everything that people working in the public sector do for a living. When you’re doing the work of balancing tough technical facts and data with the vagueness of public policy, it’s natural that an inside ...
read more →
There are a lot of challenges facing us in the public participation biz, not the least of which is the constant evolution of demographic change. Adding that to the growth and expansion of technology, and the thermonuclear political war underway in the U.S., makes for interesting times. This is a ...
read more →
