Although this was written for a slightly different purpose, it will suffice for whatever message you’re working on right now. So, say exactly what’s necessary and no more, provide evidence, and make it relevant to the receiver. Period. Read more...
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At the risk of offending redheads (please send your comments and death threats to Doug at Sarno@TheParticipationCompany.com), I must point out that probably the least considered and prioritized core value of authentic public participation is IAP2’s #7: Public participation communicates to participants how their input affected the decision. It’s the ...
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The death of George Floyd launched a rocket under the seven-year-old Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and nothing suggests it will fade from public consciousness anytime soon. But at some point we’ll need to decide what happens beyond just the protests. More than a year ago, Charlotte and Mecklenburg County ...
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Our managing pardner Debra Duerr has some personal thoughts on the role of a citizen.
Those of us in the public participation business will always remember the citizen activist we met
on every project – the person with boundless energy who resisted, shouted, provoked, forced a different way of thinking, ...
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With due respect to the previous article and its suggestions for convincing people to mask up, most people don’t understand numbers very well. People who routinely work with numbers like numbers a lot, but for most other people, numbers need to be explained in context and with relevance. Data and ...
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There’s an old saying that You do not need a parachute to skydive, you only need a parachute to skydive twice, which I think relates nicely to the face mask debate. Science says wearing face masks in public will prevent a lot of coronavirus illness and death and many of ...
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Government is less mistrusted now than it was three months ago. I wouldn’t celebrate too hard just yet but public trust in institutions is shifting as we speak. In many countries, it appears that governments’ response to the pandemic has changed attitudes about its competence, and favorably so. Read more...
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Most credible public health experts agree that COVID-19 is surging in most states, but there’s still a way to get a handle on the way that it’s being handled and presented to us. This would save lives. Read more...
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We’ve talked a lot here about risk assessment – the science of measuring the bad things that happen and the magnitude of harm – vs. risk communication, the art of helping people understand and act (or not) on the science and the math of risks. Some risks are high probability ...
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Propaganda, misinformation, deception and lies may be some of the most defining issues of our time. Political spin certainly isn’t new, but how it’s been weaponized and the media that is now available to spread and grow it is beyond anything we’ve seen before. Someone recently said that 2020 will ...
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