The Communication Imperative Ethical reflections on social media and government

The Starting Point “Any discussion on the formation, implementation and refining of an ethical society begins with the ability of that society to communicate fundamental needs, hopes, fears, pains and joys”

The Problem is Issue 1: The scale of current communication limits government and elected representatives’ ability to engage meaningfully with those they are meant to serve Issue 2: The complexity of current social and political debate demands solutions to ensure clarity, accuracy and understanding

Deconstruction and Broadcast are easy

Construction and Engagement are hard

The Solution must include Element 1: Facilitation of meaningful communication at scale Element 2: Inclusion of full range of societal actors Element 3: Provision of content identifying needs and solutions Element 4: Creation of trust between all actors within 3D social landscape

Our Approach Network Mechanism Reduces response time, simplifies “inbox” Provides marketplace, clarifies and delivers audience

Text Response

Video Response

Scale Must work at highest levels Must work at lowest levels Must be 100% transferable across social geographies Must be able to plug into any democratic government

Essential Consideration Technology, innovation and web-based tools Strengths: creating efficiencies and facilitating wide scale Weaknesses: creating empathy and facilitating deep scale

What we’ve seen Diffusion has a tendency to inflame: We can’t expect that web 2.0 tools can do more than the printing press, radio or television did. Engagement matters: We can hope that multi-way communication at scale can bring added value to a society, but not to the point we would like Online is ok, face to face is better: The key is finding a way to bridge the online and offline as this is where empathy and understanding happens