It’s easy to think that the political and public polarization of this country is a fairly recent phenomenon, but it isn’t; we’ve seen it steadily growing for a long time. It just took a few people with talent for propaganda and promotion to more clearly define the tribes, identify the ...
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Have too many of us lost the ability to think critically? Maybe. One of the toughest challenges that we face is finding and agreeing on common, evidence-based facts. We’ll never agree on the truth until we can do that. Public engagement requires a collective, common understanding of information – thus ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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