Nearly half of all adults in the US have contacted Congress at least once over the last several years. Millions of advocates to have generated hundreds of millions of messages to Congress. The vast majority of those advocates acted because an organization asked them to.

What was the result of all of that citizen communication? How was it received on the Hill, and what role has it played in policymaking? It’s a question we began to look at in earnest last year when we explored the Great Advocacy Disconnect.

This spring, we’re taking it to the next level: A national study of advocates and senior Hill staff to document the contours of the gap between advocacy and the Hill.

We are working with nonprofit organizations with active grassroots advocacy programs to survey their activists, and hitting the Hill for in-depth-interviews with current and former senior Hill staff from both sides of the aisle.

The result will be a first-of-it’s kind analysis of the advocacy experience from both sides: advocates and targets. And it will point the way to bridging the gap.

We have funding to include as many as four more nonprofit organizations in the survey side of the research. If you would like to talk about participating, give us a call at 202-683-8465 or email ten.nilgnenull@hcraeser.

Who’s Your Enemy?

“One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.”

So counseled Rules for Radicals author Saul Alinsky.

His advice boils down to this observation about motivation and human nature: mobilizing people requires an enemy. A positive call to action is rarely enough.

This year we’re working with several clients new to advocacy. They’re nonprofits that have focused on providing excellent services to people in need, and have left the advocacy to their political friends. But this year, as federal and state budget cuts are hitting nonprofits exactly as demand for services rises, they’re engaging for the first time to advocate for smarter, more humane, and more future-friendly state budgets.

For these organizations, the enemy is poverty or disease and they provide services to combat it. The angels are people, and the devils are the forces that conspire to keep people from living full, healthy, happy lives.

The leap to advocacy is a culture shock: in politics the angels are people, and the devils are, too. And there’s no time to work it out: politics move fast; blink and you’ve missed your opportunity.

This year promises big changes: big changes to who does advocacy, how it’s done, and how it works. We’re honored to help those who make a difference by serving people in need play a winning role in all of that big change, even if it means holding hands and leaping into uncomfortable territory.

Let us know how we can help you this year.

350.org Blowing the Whistle on Congress

Making their second appearance in our occasional “cheers and unsolicited advice” series in this space, today we’re highlighting the latest campaign from 350.org.

We don’t work with 350.org, but we want to give them big cheers for their “Blow the Whistle on Congress” campaign. Three reasons we love it:

1. The campaign is big but focused on a specific active issue.

No “get big money out of politics” here!

This campaign connects a specific, active question (one with a specific piece of legislation soon to be attached) – ending government subsidies for big oil companies – to 350.org’s big sweeping mission to build a global movement solve the climate crisis.

Bonus: the campaign connects the specific legislative ask to Members’ of Congress voting record and the extent they’ve benefited from Big Oil largesse in campaigns. It’s based in information and tells a coherent story about what’s happening. To wit: some Congresspeople are taking big campaign checks from big oil then turning around and voting to spend big tax dollars to subsidize those same companies.

2. The call-to-action acknowledges that not all Members of Congress are the same and promises some strategic targeting.

The online action page leaves out some of the nuance in the email action alert:

We need to be a little nuanced: for those of you with representatives who have been taking lots of oil money and then voting for handouts for oil companies, then the task is clear — they need to hear from some refs. For those of you with representatives who are doing what’s right already, get in touch with us – I’m sure there is some other elected official nearby who needs to hear from some refs.

Perfect: Focused action on the Members of Congress most likely in need of persuasion, without alienating the Members that are allies.

3. The call-to-action is putting people to work on the ground in their own Congressional district – getting the heck out of DC.

Again, quoting the email alert:

You don’t need to wait for your politicians to get home for recess. You can mount a small demonstration outside their office—and if you do it in the run up to the Super Bowl, you’re almost certain to get some media notice. Remember: if one team was buying off the refs in the big game, it would be a national scandal. In DC, it’s business as usual—until now.

I know that in some ways this is harder than traveling to DC to be with a big crowd. But you’re capable of this kind of activism, and it’s what we need so badly right now.

Especially in this election year, holding Members accountable with their voters at home is vital. 350.org rocks for nudging their activists away from flash and toward function. Booyah.

——

The reasons we love this campaign point to actionable questions for any campaign: act on specifics to build for the big picture, know enough about the process to do some strategic targeting, focus action on where it will make a difference.

We’re here to help: get in touch to talk through ways to apply these winning lessons to your next campaign: 202-683-8465 or ten.nilgnenull@ofni.

SOPA Status

SOPA – The Stop Online Piracy Act – is currently being marked up in the House Judiciary Committee. They’re taking a break at the moment, and are expected to pick the bill back up in early February.

A bill in “markup” is in the part of the process where committees really do their work. Markup happens after the committee hears testimony, and is the stage in policy making when bills are really debated, amended, and rewritten.

Who Has Power on SOPA Right Now?

The Members of Congress with power to do anything on SOPA right now, in order of influence at this point in the process, are:

1. House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R, TX-21)

Congressman Smith is the sponsor of the SOPA. He will be working to pass it, and grassroots advocacy to change his mind is highly unlikely to succeed.

2. Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee

Here’s who they are and their current public position on SOPA (all positions according to Pro Publica )

Adams (FL-24): ??
Amodei (NV-2): Support (Co-Sponsor)
Chabot (OH-1): Support (Co-Sponsor)
Chaffetz (UT-3): Oppose
Coble (NC – 6): ??
Forbes (VA-4): ??
Franks (AZ-2): ??
Gallegly (CA-24): Support (Co-Sponsor)
Gohmert (TX-1): ??
Goodlatte (VA-6): Support
Gowdy (SC-4): ??
Griffin (AR-2): Support (Co-Sponsor) Oppose
Issa (CA-49): Oppose
Jordan: (OH-4): ??
King (IA-5): ??
Lungren (CA-3): ??
Marino (PA-10): Support (Co-Sponsor)
Pence (IN-6): ??
Poe (TX-2): ??
Quayle (AZ-3): Support (Co-Sponsor) Oppose
Ross (FL-12): Support (Co-Sponsor)
Sensenbrenner, Jr. (WI-5): Oppose

The count among Republicans on House Judiciary is:
Support: 8 6 (including 7 5 co-sponsors)
Oppose: 2 5
Unknown: 11

Co-sponsors are extremely unlikely to withdraw their support for the bill, absent an alternative. If you live in their districts, let them know you’re disappointed, and that you hope they’ll sign on to OPEN instead.

The two Republicans who have come out in opposition to SOPA are also unlikely to waver. Rep. Chaffetz provided a video to KeepthewebOpen.com and made on-the-record comments in committee in opposition to SOPA. He’s solid.

Similarly, Rep. Issa spoke out against SOPA as currently written and announced plans to introduce an alternate bill, the OPEN Act. (Keep your advocacy hat on in the coming weeks – OPEN is the next big thing in this fight.)

Protest SOPA by encouraging everyone you know who lives in a district represented by one of the uncommitted House Judiciary Republicans to weigh in against SOPA here: https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/hr3261
and find phone numbers to call their Congressperson here: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

UPDATE: Lo and behold – on January 18th, two Republican co-sponsors on the House Judiciary committee withdrew their support! And all it took was the entire internet to rise up is protest. 

2. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee

Berman (CA-28): Support (Co-Sponsor)
Chu (CA-32): Support (Co-Sponsor)
Cohen (TN-9): ??
Conyers (MI-14): Support (Co-Sponsor)
Deutch (FL-19): Support (Co-Sponsor)
Jackson-Lee (TX-18): Leaning Oppose
Johnson (GA-4): ??
Lofgren (CA-16): Oppose
Nadler (NY-8): ??
Polis (CO-2): Oppose
Quigley (IL-5): ??
Sanchez (CA-39): ??
Scott (VA-3): ??
Waters (CA-35): ??
Watt (NC-12): Support (Co-Sponsor)

The count among Democrats on House Judiciary is:
Support: 5 (all 5 are co-sponsors)
Oppose: 2
Leaning Oppose: 1
Unknown: 7

Protest SOPA! Encourage everyone you know who lives in a district represented by one of the uncommitted House Judiciary Democrats to weigh in against SOPA here:
https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/hr3261
and find phone numbers to call their Congressperson here: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

3. House Republican Leadership

In the event SOPA opponents fail to kill it in the House Judiciary committee, SOPA will go to a full House vote where House Republican leadership can play a significant role.

None of the Republican leaders have taken a public stand on SOPA. Here’s who they are:

Speaker Boehner (OH-8): ??
Majority Leader Cantor (VA-7): ??
Majority Whip McCarthy (CA-22): ??
Republican Conference Chairman Hensarling (TX-5): ??
Republican Policy Committee Chairman Price (GA-6): ??

After you’ve sent everyone you know represented by an uncommitteed legislator on House Judiciary to make their voice heard here:
https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/hr3261
and follow up with a phone call (contact info here: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/),

then encourage everyone you know who is represented by one of the Republican leaders listed above to make their voice heard.

4. House Democratic Leadership

Democratic Leadership also plays a role in the event of a full House vote.

Democratic leaders are:

Democratic Leader Pelosi (CA-8): Oppose
Democratic Whip Hoyer (MD-5): ??
Assistant Democratic Leader Clyburn (SC-6): ??
Democratic Caucus Chairman Larson (CT-1): Support (Co-Sponsor)

So that’s one no, one co-sponsoring yes, and two unknowns amongst Democratic leaders.

You know the drill: first get everyone you know who is represented by an uncommitted legislator on House Judiciary to make their voice heard:
https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/hr3261
find contact info for a phone call: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

Then get folks represented by Congressman Hoyer or Congressman Clyburn to encourage these two Democratic leaders to oppose SOPA.

5. All other members of the House.

A full House vote would give every member of the House a vote on the issue.

Including those listed above, the current count on House members who have taken a public position on SOPA is:

Support: 32 27
Oppose: 25 83
Leaning Oppose: 34
Unknown: 290

So, no matter where you live, make your voice heard in opposition to SOPA:
Do it here: https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/hr3261
And make a phone call to your Congressperson, too: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

—-

It never hurts to know the ins and outs of the policy you’re protesting. If you’re feeling a bit in the dark about SOPA and it’s Senate sister bill, PIPA, read a quick primer here, or watch a tongue-in-cheek, mildly NSFW explanation here.

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED TO REFLECT CHANGES IN THE VOTE COUNT. IT HAS ALSO BEEN CHANGED FOR RELEVANCE POST-SOPA PROTEST DAY, WHEN IT WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED.

A version of this article will be part of Salsa Lab’s Advocacy Rising series. We recommend the in-person training and webinar they’re offering for free on January 19th.

Even the US Chamber of Commerce, with its essentially unlimited resources to spend to ensure their agenda wins the day, focuses their advocacy resources on the decision-makers they need to move and the constellation of people who influence them.

If you’re not the US Chamber of Commerce, you don’t have unlimited resources and strategically targeting your efforts isn’t optional – it’s vital.

Whether your advocacy is focused on Congress, state legislatures, regulators, or corporate campaigns, the basics of strategic targeting are the same.

1. Know Process and Power

What’s the process for change and who controls that process?

On the Hill, leaders of the majority in each body are the decision-makers on big budget issues; committee chairs hold the cards on most everything else.

In state legislatures, leaders and committee chairs have the most power but in most states there’s room for individual legislators not in the majority or a chairmanship to move an agenda.

Not all government policy flows through legislators, of course. At the federal level and in every state there are extensive bureaucracies that make critical decisions about regulations, funding, and more – decisions that can mitigate or complicate the policy context you care about. Most have formal decision processes that you can engage in, and leaders or groups of leaders that make the decisions.

In some cases the President might be your key decision-maker, and at the state level you may need the Governor with you. In both cases your real targets are probably leaders within the bureaucracy.

Don’t neglect local government, either, as a target for change that can make a significant difference. City council members, school boards, superintendents, and others are often far more accessible than their state and federal counterparts, and make decisions with real impact on your issue.

On the corporate side, knowing how decisions are made is no less important: do you need the Board of Directors to act? Is what you’re trying to change a CEO-level decision? Who has the authority and power to make the change?

Without knowing process and power, strategic targeting is impossible.

2. Power Map

Once you know the process and who’s most powerful in it, learn who and what influences those powerful people: build a power map.

For elected officials at all levels the categories of people on a power map are fairly consistent: colleagues, donors, voters, cause groups, media, kitchen cabinet, and personal affinity groups.

Think of the decision-maker at the center of concentric circles.

For some decision-makers on some issues, the best way to reach them is to influence their kitchen cabinet – the people who recruited them to run, chair their campaign committee, act as informal spokespeople, went to elementary school with them, etc. Those folks would be on the circle closest to the decision maker, and your job is to figure out how you can get to them. Who on your list is positioned to help? Who can you partner with to get there?

If an elected official is in a swing district, facing a tough reelection, the closest circle in might be particular sets of voters (women, vets, small business owners, etc.) and your job is to mobilize them to speak up.

Fill in the details of these categories to identify the pathways to your targets that you’re in the best position to influence, and the most important ways to build your lists and movement in specific geographies.

2a. Be Honest

A member of the Englin Consulting team is a state legislator. He ran and won on championing public education, equality and choice, progressive tax reform, environmental stewardship, and health care access and affordability.

No amount of power mapping, grassroots mobilization, or other advocacy short of defeating him in an election will change his votes on the core issues and values he ran and won on.

The same is true of every legislator and decision-maker; on some things, they’re not movable.

When deciding on your targets, be honest about who is with you, who is movable, and who is against you.

Target those who are solidly against you with an eye toward defeating them in upcoming elections, as a warning shot to wavering allies, or in some other indirect ways – but be honest in your plan and with your advocates about what you expect from your targets.

3. Target for Tomorrow, Too

About half of current Members of Congress were state legislators before running for the US House or Senate.

That means they arrived on the Hill with a record, a history of relationships with constituency groups, and an approach to decision-making that will likely stick with them.

Even if your agenda is federal, it makes sense to work at the state level to build your power for the future – today’s state House member is likely tomorrow’s Congressman.

People at corporations get promoted, regulators build more influence within their bureaucracy, and local government officials build power and influence and often run for higher office.

Targeting your advocacy program to build real power and capacity not just for today’s battles, but for tomorrow’s is smart strategy.

Think health care reform and deficit reduction. Both are good in policy theory, but bad in political practice for the “winner” of the policy battle.

So, Congress isn’t going to accomplish much this year. The President can’t accomplish much without Congress, so he’s not going to try.

So what’s an advocacy program to do?  Three suggestions to make 2012 successful:

1. Build your offline advocacy muscle.

This year will bring ideal opportunities to get your advocates offline and in front of their representatives.

From telephone town halls to in-district fundraising events, rallies to public debates, door-knocking to polling, this year Members of Congress will be unusually available to their constituents.

Use these opportunities to build your offline advocacy muscle.

Organize a “bird dog” campaign by asking your advocates to pledge to participate in a telephone town hall and ask a question about your issue.  Ask your advocates to pick up calls from pollsters and mention your issue if given an opportunity to provide their own answer to a question. Encourage your advocates to include a note about your issue with any contributions they make to candidates, and to bend candidate’s ears if they get a chance at fundraising events.

Elected officials never care more about constituent feedback than during election years. Use this year wisely.

Work in the states.

If you don’t have a robust strategy for working in the states this year, you’re missing the ball.

Fifty percent of members of Congress were once state legislators, and they bring their ideology and issue positions to the Hill with them from their state offices.

Given redistricting, the impact of wave elections, and the increasing coordination of policy across states (primarily by conservative legislators through groups like ALEC), even if your issue matrix is primarily federal, you should be engaging in advocacy in the states.

Mind the Gap.

This year we’re continuing our focus on improving the practice grassroots advocacy as a way to influence policy.

We humbly recommend that you revisit our own The Great Disconnect, Jake Brewer’s Tragedy of Advocacy, and take a few minutes to read Clay Johnson’s Dear Internet: It’s No Longer OK to Not Know How Congress Works.

SuperPACs and other election-year players make it more important than ever that grassroots advocacy is done well: which means smart targeting, savvy timing, and building to demonstrate political power.

2012 Is Your Year. Let Us Know How We Can Help.

As ever, if we can help meet your strategy, advocacy, or communications needs, don’t hesitate to be in touch: 202.683.8465 or ten.nilgnenull@ofni.

1) Progressives have marched and protested and marched some more.

Wikipedia lists 45 protest marches in Washington DC over the last 12 years. All but four of them were progressives who took to the streets. An accounting of protests and marches outside of DC is a bit more difficult to compile, but by available measures – categories of protest on wikipedia, news searches, etc. – it seems the national trend is no different than the DC trend. Progressives have been marching, dammit.

2) Conservatives have been winning.

Sure, progressives have won some skirmishes and even some big battles. The White House and a few years in the majority in the House and Senate are nothing to sneeze at. But conservatives are winning the war. Wars. All of the important ones. Enter the litany of progressive frustrations here: two costly wars, the hollowing out of the social safety net, gutting government services, fleeing from science, gaping and growing income and wealth gaps, entrenched poverty, etc.

So consider a third fact, based on the evidence: maybe marches aren’t the best tactic to change things.

Maybe progressives don’t need a better, more nationally coordinated day of marching. Not today or any day.

Progressives need to dig into the long term work of wresting back power. Conservatism is winning the day because conservatives set about winning from local office and policy up to federal office and policy over the past several decades. They took control of the GOP and from there took control of the chambers of power – City Councils, Governor’s mansions, state legislatures, Congress (regardless of the Party in power, conservatives rule there now).

So instead of marching, protest as an individual, or help your organization participate in protest, by doing three things that might help move the ball:

1) Figure out what you want. Seriously. “No more corporate greed” is a protest chant, not a political demand. Dedicate half the time you might have spent marching to researching the issues, figuring out what you think, what organizations and elected officials you find closest to representing your values, and where you can plug in. Serious challenges require serious responses. Protest today by getting serious about what winning means.

2) If you haven’t already moved your money from a Wall Street bank, do it. This is more than symbolic – the associations and PACs of the independent community banks play different politics than the Wall Street banks. The more power the independent community banks have, the more progressive the influence from the banking industry. A big deal.

3) Research who’s running for office in your neighborhood – from dogcatcher on up – and pay particular attention to Primaries. If you spent half of your alloted protest time to figuring out what you want, then spend a second half to asking your current and would-be representatives where they stand on what you want. Sign up to help those that are with you.

Protest by winning.

• How the Top 50 Nonprofits Do Social Media – http://craigconnects.org/infographic
• Who Rules Social Media – http://craigconnects.org/infographic-2

Among the most interesting findings:

• Big budgets and big social media presence are not correlated. The organization with the most revenue – the YMCA – has fewer Facebook fans and Twitter followers than the 50th organization in terms of revenue – the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
• There’s no strong correlation between the number of Facebook “likes” an organization has and the number of comments its content engenders. The second-most liked organization on Facebook (World Vision, as of the end of September) wasn’t in the top five most commented organizations on Facebook.
• Big growth requires investment. After hiring a full time social media manager, ASPCA’s Twitter followers nearly doubled to 75,000 and their Facebook fans grew to over a million.

As organizations, causes, and associations are increasingly expected to “do” social media, an accounting of what that means for the biggest non-profits is good to have.

But not enough to act on.

So, this week we offer up three things you can do to make Craig’s information actionable for you:

1. Know your “so what?”

If you could wave a magic wand and double your Facebook fans and quadruple your Twitter followers tomorrow, what would you hope would be the result?

More donations? More advocacy actions? More people showing up to volunteer next weekend?

Be sure that if you were to have RAD campaigns create an infographic of your social media work, it would include some notion of impact.

For more on this, see an oldie but goodie e-book Shayna wrote with Shabbir Safdar: Is your Nonprofit Facebook Page Worth It? (a PDF file). While some of the details have changed as Facebook has changed, the gist still applies, as does the task list.

2. Inventory your metrics.

Craig and RAD Campaigns took a look at presence – number of fans and followers, number of posts, etc. – and also what that presence inspired.

Do you know how many comments per post you get on average?  How many mentions per tweet?

Take a look at what you’re tracking and make sure it’s up to date with what is possible and makes a difference to your social media effectiveness.

3. Pick one thing to try to improve.

Maybe your organization posts plenty, but never responds to comments thus limiting your potential for engaging folks in your work.  Pick that to improve on over the next quarter.

Set a goal (say, at least one response or retweet per day), dedicate resources (maybe 15 minutes of someone’s time every day), decide on how you’ll measure success, and get to work on getting better at just one piece of your social media work.

We’d separate out our target decision-makers into three categories: base (with us), opposition (against us), and persuadable. We’d decide how we could thank our base and punish our opponents. And then we’d draw concentric circles of influence around our targets. Who did Rep. Soandso golf with? Where does he go to church? What alumni association is she part of? Who are her biggest donors? And then… how could we get into those inner circles?

We did this on whiteboards and butcher paper and the thoroughness of our map to our persuadable decision-makers was entirely dependent on how much savvy and information was in the room.

What a difference a decade or so makes. Digital networking tools make “the room” a whole lot bigger, so today’s power maps can be that much more powerful. Here are three ways to amp up your path into the inner circle:

1) Use LinkedIn. Seriously.

Your online communications or advocacy team probably considers LInkedIn as part of a social media strategy. You, a person concerned about how to get your agenda into the inner circles around your key persuadable decision-makers, should use LinkedIn to light the path from your computer to power.

Unlike the other social media channels, LinkedIn not only supports but graphs networks. Want to get to this Member of Congress or that Chief of Staff? If you’re not connected but your board chair is, LinkedIn will tell you that. Looking for folks involved with a specific church? Search for it on LinkedIn and you can see who you (and/or your organization) are connected to who is also connected to that church.

Don’t think about LinkedIn as a social network. Or do, but not in this context. Think of it is a sophisticated rolodex that lights up the pathways to your targets for you.

2) Ask your folks to tell you who they know.

Skip the umpteenth petition ask. Instead, ask your best activists, donors, and leaders who they know.

Ask your folks who are on LinkedIn to connect to your organization page on LinkedIn. Explain how and why it’s helpful.

Ask for specific information (“who do you know that hosts political events at their home?” is better than “who do you know who’s interested in politics?”) and provide a “no duh” easy way for them to provide it, like hitting reply on the email.

3) Microtarget – find the donors.

While it’s not generally practical to map your entire database against political donations (unless you’re maplight.org or have resources to access data in the same way), researching the political giving for your best advocates, donors, leaders, and volunteers within select few state legislative or Congressional districts should be doable. Use opensecrets.org and followthemoney.org as well as state-specific databases (like vpap.org here in Virginia) to get started.

Which doesn’t make either concept less important, but just harder to work out how to apply to help you win – whatever winning means in your context.

Here are three solidly grounded ideas to help you use storytelling to win:

1. Find one iconic story that demonstrates why it’s important for you to win.

This is the story of your mission – the reason you’re fighting whatever battles you’re fighting, and recruiting volunteers, mobilizing advocates, and raising money to help you fight.

This story is the consistent answer to all variations of the question, “why should I help?”

Your story must have a hero that your audiences will recognize: the student who escaped poverty thanks to the education program you’re fighting for, the mom who was able to keep it all together thanks to the child care options you’re championing, the grandpa who’s still getting to play with his grandkids because he got that screening you’re working to get covered.

Your story must be specific and authentic. Tell someone’s real story, not the hypothetical stories of “people like this person.”

2. Repeat your iconic story everywhere and all of the time.

Your story is your rallying cry. It’s your reason for you work. It’s your reason for inviting others to help you win.

Repeat it. All the time.

Make it the centerpiece of your fundraising asks, your volunteer recruitment, your advocacy mobilization, etc.

You’re repeating it often enough if your organization’s staff, volunteers, and donors report that when they meet new people and tell them where they work or give, those new people say, “oh, you’re the folks about X” and repeat your story back.

3. Make the specific universal.

You win when your story becomes everyone’s story.

When your audiences and stakeholders and allies and targets consider their stories in the context of your story, they make your mission their mission, and your win their win.

So encourage it. Pick a detail from your story that’s universal – the thrill of a freshly sharpened pencil at school, grabbing a jacket off the hook by the door on the way out to drop the kids at day care, the color of the hallway at the doctor’s office – and invite your audiences to share their experience with that detail.

More people having more access to more information doesn’t make any of that information better, it doesn’t remove the incentives to misinform, and it doesn’t make it harder to misinform: in fact, it’s easier than ever to confuse and distort, and harder than ever to set the record straight.  It turns out that more information doesn’t equal more knowledge.

The argument strikes me as generally true, and his examples are compelling: large percentages of people believe Barack Obama is a Muslim, though there’s incontrovertible proof he is not.  Why do so many believe what is verifiably untrue?  Because individuals and entities whose interests are served by spreading that little lie spent time, energy, and money making sure it zipped across the information superhighway directly to the computer screens of those most likely to believe it.  The resources required to refute it would be massive and in the scheme of things wasted, so information that should die a small quiet death lives on with a too-large megaphone.

The Englin Consulting team includes a number of sci-fi fans (okay… all of us).  We read dystopias, wherein trademark of  misery is an absence of reliable truth.

In some visions of our near future, the absence of truth is thanks to a maleavolent government.  I’m thinking of  Farenheit 451 and 1984.  In others, it’s thanks to an overabundance of information and a paucity of knowledge.  Caleb Carr’s Killing Time comes to mind, with it’s iconic topic sentence: “It is the greatest truth of our age: information is not knowledge.” In Carr’s vision of our near future (the novel is set in 2023) no single entity has caused the hyper-wired and plugged in populace to consume  mass quantities of misinformation, it’s a consequence of too much and too easily manipulated information.  Think Photoshop and mashups alongside “legitimate” news in a constant stream of bits and bytes too large and moving too fast to parse too closely.

The future is now.

The organizations, candidates, and individuals that can be trusted to synthesize information into reliable knowledge will have the keys to the kingdom. Donors, voters, consumers – all of us – will increasingly be hunting for those streams of information that provide us not only with bits of this and bits of that, but a sense of a whole that makes sense and can be trusted.

With great power comes great responsibility, of course: a small slip and these paragons of wisdom will be cast aside faster than a snuggie in the summer, doomed to the dustbin of irrelevance.

So, go forth and be knowledgeable. Collect and synthesize information, and share it as trustworthy knowledge.  It’ll help you change the world.