Learning Archives

Blog

Understanding Trust to Strengthen Democracy

Srik Gopal

August 21, 2017

This blog was co-authored by Francesca Mazzola, Associate Director at FSG.

Three Important Lessons About Trust

At Democracy Fund, we have been exploring questions of trust. Trust in institutions is at an all-time low. In 2016, for example, only 32% of Americans said they had a “Great Deal” or “Fair Amount of Trust” in mass media, the lowest level of trust in Gallup polling history.

Meanwhile, research suggests (1) that higher levels of trust lead to: a) greater confidence in trusted individuals or institutions and b) a willingness to act based on that confidence. In the context of our national relationship to the news media, for instance, this implies that a significant majority of Americans may not be willing to act civically or otherwise based on the information provided by mass media outlets.

Given that democracies function best when individuals participate in the civic process (e.g. voting, running for office, volunteering), it is clear that the current low level of trust in public institutions (including, but not only, the media) is a problem in need of attention. A healthy democracy requires institutions that are both trustworthy and trusted.

As we’ve been investigating the notion of trust, three important lessons have become apparent to us:

1. Trust has both cognitive and affective dimensions

Think about someone you trust. Now think about the reasons why you trust that person. More than likely, they have a good “track record” of having been there for you when you needed them. In addition, you probably have an emotional bond with them that allows you to be vulnerable. This exemplifies the two dimensions of trust – cognitive and affective. (2)

Cognitive trust has been described as “trusting from the head.” It includes factors such as dependability, predictability, and reputation. Affective trust, on the other hand, involves having mutual care and concern or emotional bonds. This has been described as “trusting from the heart.” Most trusting relationships have both cognitive and affective aspects that often reinforce one another.

2. Trust and trustworthiness are not the same

One way to understand trust is that it is a firm belief (cognitive and affective) in the goodness of something (we use the word “goodness” deliberately here, as dictionary definitions of trust tend to use descriptors of trustworthiness instead). We are often willing to trust people, companies, and institutions because we believe they are good, at least in the context in which we trust them.

Trustworthiness is a related, but different notion. Trustworthiness is defined as the perceived likelihood that a particular trustee will uphold one’s trust. (3) Like trust, it also has cognitive dimensions (such as competence, credibility, and reliability) and affective dimensions (such as ethics and positive intentions) that signal that the trustee “has what it takes” to meet the trustor’s needs and uphold their trust.

Imagine your interaction with your bank. Though you don’t necessarily need to trust the bank (i.e. believe in its “goodness”) as you would trust a spouse or a close friend, you must believe that the bank is trustworthy – i.e., it completes your transaction as intended, obeys laws, and follows a code of ethics. But you have to have trust in the overall monetary and financial system to even feel safe opening a bank account – something that was adversely affected after the financial crisis.

3. Trustworthiness and trust have a counter-intuitive relationship

A rational point of view of the relationship between trustworthiness and trust would suggest that when you first encounter a system, you make an assessment of its trustworthiness (e.g., competence, predictability), and then you calibrate your level of trust accordingly.

But, alas, human beings are anything but rational. The evidence around human cognition and reasoning increasingly points to a counter-intuitive relationship: often, we enter into a new relationship (with a person or a system) with a level of trust that is influenced by the “bubbles” (i.e. communities and networks populated by like-minded folks) that we inhabit.

From there, we look for information to confirm our initial instincts (often referred to as “confirmation bias”). The type of information we look for or prioritize (e.g., cognitive vs. affective factors) varies by individual and by situation. This phenomenon help us understand, for instance, why individuals trust a news source that is perceived to be more aligned with their political views.

What this means

In the light of these dynamics, improving the trustworthiness of a system is often necessary and vital, but perhaps insufficient as a way to build public trust. Of course, we want to prevent a crisis of trustworthiness from eroding trust. For instance, public trust in Japan’s institutions suffered a severe blow as a result of the government’s bungled response to the Fukushima disaster in 2011. But, ensuring trustworthiness on its own may not be enough to overcome the contextual forces that undermine trust in the first place.

Furthermore, some efforts to improve trustworthiness, such as technical improvements to a system, are shown to decrease trust in the short-term, by introducing unpredictability as people have to navigate an unfamiliar tool or process. As we will discuss in the next part of this post, these complicated dynamics will have to be kept in mind as one tries to navigate the work of re-building trust in democratic institutions.

How We Are Strengthening Trust and Trustworthiness

For the Democracy Fund, and anyone else working on improving American democracy, it is hard to ignore the fact that trust in institutions is remarkably low by historical standards. This is especially true for Democracy Fund’s three main areas of focus – media and journalism, Congress, and elections. There are several factors that have led to this. For instance, our Congress and Public Trust systems map explores how the actions of members of Congress and their staff, the media, and the public interact to create the current state of Congress.

Previously, we talked a bit about why this decline in trust matters. The question now becomes, “can anything be done about it?” And in our efforts to do something about it, do we focus on trust, trustworthiness, or both?

The “trust matrix”

As we discussed previously, level of trust and assessment of trustworthiness are related, but different notions, and each has cognitive and affective dimensions. These concepts are organized below into what we’ve come to call the trust matrix. The matrix also provides labels (e.g., “personal affinity”) to help readers easily navigate the differences among categories of concepts.

Implications for Democracy Fund

We recognize that in order to restore trust in democratic institutions, we need to work on multiple fronts. This by no means an easy task. Philanthropy, in general, tends to focus on solutions that address trustworthiness. For instance, an effort to improve education may focus primarily on educator competencies, or work to create a set of proficiency standards.

This may be because it can be a lot harder to affect people’s personal affinity for individuals or institutions, or public perceptions of individuals’ or institutions’ characters. While there may be few “tried and true” methods to address these factors, they are nonetheless important pieces in affecting individuals’ trust in systems and institutions. At the same time, it’s important to acknowledge that there are potential ethical implications with influencing people’s belief systems, and hence a responsible framework needs to be considered.

As we grapple with the myriad of intricacies here, we are beginning to come to terms with what types of approaches may fit under each quadrant of trust matrix. Below are some early hypotheses:

Trustworthiness: We must increase the trustworthiness of institutions by equipping key stakeholders with better tools and practices (cognitive), and the promulgation and adoption of better standards and ethics (affective). For our elections work, this might mean identifying standards and promoting security in election systems, and providing election officials with the resources they need to maintain system integrity. Any failure within our election system could seriously undermine public trust. For our media and journalism work, this may mean re-thinking how we make the case for fundamental facts and combat misinformation, as well as working on practices around transparency and corrections.
Level of Trust: We also need to tackle the trust deficit through strategies that speak directly to the public through engagement tools (cognitive) and the use of bonding and identification (affective). For our elections work, this may mean empowering the right messengers with tools and tactics to improve voter confidence. For our media and journalism work, this may mean having specific strategies that emphasize improving trust among historically marginalized communities, and other groups with special attention to increasing the diversity and inclusion of sources, stories and staffing.

At a time when our democratic norms are often undermined, we hope that our work to strengthen trust in trustworthy institutions will help build public confidence and participation in our democracy. As we continue to develop and hone our approach, we look forward to learning and sharing more with the field.

Thanks to Marcie Parkhurst, Nikhil Bumb, and Jaclyn Marcatili from FSG for supporting the research that informed this piece.

Works Cited:

1. Kelton, Kari. “Trust in Digital Information.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (2008): 363-74.

2. McAllister, D. J. “Affect- And Cognition-Based Trust As Foundations For Interpersonal Cooperation In Organizations.” Academy of Management Journal 38.1 (1995): 24-59

3. Colquitt, Jason A. “Justice, Trust, and Trustworthiness: A Longitudinal Analysis Integrating Three Theoretical Perspectives.” The Academy of Management Journal, vol. 54, no. 6, 1 Dec. 2011, pp. 1183–1206. JSTOR.

Back to Ideas

Blog

New Report Highlights Challenges to Congress’ Capacity to Perform Their Role in Democracy

Chris Nehls

August 7, 2017

Imagine having a job that requires you to master complex subject matter thrown at you at a moment’s notice in rapid fashion. Now imagine that you have practically no time, training, or resource support to learn that material with any real depth. Nobody else around the office knows anything about what’s on your plate either to even point you in the right direction. Oh, and you’re using a 10-year-old computer and work practices are such that you’re still literally pushing paper around much of the day.

How would you feel about the job you were doing in that situation? How long would you stay?

Unfortunately, for many congressional staffers, this description is all too apt of their workplace. New research authored by Kathy Goldschmidt of the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) reveals how dissatisfied congressional staff are with their ability to perform key aspects of their jobs they understand are vital to the function of the institution as a deliberative legislative body. The dysfunction that the public sees in Washington, the report reveals, really is the product of a Congress that lacks the capacity to fulfill its obligations to Americans.

CMF researchers performed a gap analysis of surveys they took of senior-level House and Senate staffers, measuring the distance between how many respondents said they were “very satisfied” with the performance of key aspects of their workplace they deemed “very important” to the effectiveness of their chamber. The largest gaps appeared in the three areas most closely connected to the institution’s ability to develop well-informed public policy and legislation and with Congress’s technological infrastructure to support office needs.

Although more than 80 percent of staffers though it was “very important” for them to have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to support members’ official duties, only 15 percent said they were “very satisfied’ with their chamber’s performance.

CMF found similar yawning gaps in satisfaction with the training, professional development, and other human resource support they needed to execute their duties, access to high-quality nonpartisan policy expertise, and the time and resources members have to understand pending legislation. Just six percent of respondents were “very satisfied” with congressional technological infrastructure.

These findings reflect a decades-long trend by Congress to divest in its own capacity to master legislative subject material. Just last month, more than a hundred members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to slash funding for the Congressional Budget Office, despite its integral role in the legislative process.

But as the report concludes, opening the funding spigot and hiring more legislative staff alone will not solve the challenges to the resiliency of Congress as a democratic institution.

The Democracy Fund’s Governance Team has taken up ranks with a growing community to push for a more systemic approach to improving the operations and functions of our 240-year-old national legislature struggling to adapt to the forces of modernity. Certainly, Congress can do much more to support its own internal culture of learning and expertise: but civil society has a critical role in rebuilding congressional resiliency, too. Congress has just started to bring the vast technical and subject area know-how that exists outside its marble edifices to assist a process of institutional transformation. The work of establishing trusted modes of communications with constituents in this digital age, meanwhile, barely has begun.

The CMF report performs a critical pathfinding role, illuminating where the places of most dire need within the institution exist. I read it as an optimistic document: congressional staff know that their deepest deficiencies are critically important to the institution’s health. Energy is on the side of reform. The challenge ahead is not to be discouraged by the scale of the problems but to work systemically so that change can build upon itself and ripple through the system.

Back to Ideas

Blog

Systems Thinking: A View from the Trenches

Srik Gopal

May 3, 2017

This piece was co-authored by Donata Secondo and Robin Kane and was originally published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR)

In recent years, systems thinking—a discipline that helps us understand interdependent structures of dynamic systems—has emerged as a powerful force for change in the philanthropic world. Borne out of the realization that significant and sustainable social change requires more than discrete interventions, systems thinking has become de rigueur for any foundation looking to create impact at scale. A 2016 publication on systems grantmaking by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, as well as recent pieces by FSG, Bridgespan, and New Profit have captured this spirit, and sought to provide guidance and direction for foundations navigating this new world.

But what does systems thinking and change look like in the trenches?

The Democracy Fund, which spun off from Omidyar Network as an independent entity in 2014, provides one example. The Democracy Fund’s mission is to help ensure that the US political system can withstand new challenges and deliver on its promise to the American people. Given the complexity of this goal, we knew from the beginning that to produce the greatest impact, we needed to create strong, systems-oriented strategies that aligned with the work of others.

READ MORE via SSIR

Back to Ideas

Blog

News Integrity Initiative: Building a More Trustworthy Public Square

Paul Waters

April 4, 2017

Josh Stearns co-authored this piece with Paul Waters.

At the Democracy Fund we believe that a healthy democracy depends on a vibrant and trustworthy public square. At a time of deep partisanship and threats to democratic ideals and institutions, media have a powerful role to play informing the public and helping bridge the differences we face in our communities, and our nation. However, the erosion of trust in journalism raises profound challenges for a democracy that depends on an open marketplace of ideas, vibrant civil debate, and a press that holds all leaders accountable.

We joined the News Integrity Initiative because we understand that trust is a complex issue and that it demands a diversity of approaches.

The News Integrity Initiative, a project by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, is focused on helping people make informed judgments about the news they read and share online. By funding applied research and convening meetings with industry experts, the Initiative will work to advance news literacy, increase trust in journalism around the world, and better inform the public conversation.

We are excited to join others in supporting a range of people, practices, and ideas to rebuild new kinds of relationships between communities and newsrooms. There is no silver bullet to solve all concerns around trust in media, but we want to roll up our sleeves and work with others who are committed to asking hard questions and seeking out workable solutions to complicated problems.

At the Democracy Fund, we bring to this work a deep commitment to local news, community engagement, and diversity in media. We know that trust looks different in different communities, and that trust is often nuanced, contextual, and shifting. Part of how we got here today is through self-inflicted wounds by an industry that hasn’t always served the needs of everybody in America. And we are aware that issues of trust in media are not new for many communities who have been left out, misrepresented, and hurt by media coverage throughout our nation’s history. We want to work with people in big cities and small rural communities, on the coasts and in the heartland, and in red and blue states across the country.

While these issues have been in the spotlight recently, the erosion of trust in journalism is part of broader shifts in how people relate to institutions across our democracy. The ongoing economic challenges facing the press today demand new ideas about the role the public in supporting and sustaining the press. We are encouraged by the News Integrity Initiative’s emphasis on putting people at the center of the discussion about trust.

Jeff Jarvis, the director of the Tow Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY, which will administer the fund, wrote that he wants “to explore this issue from a public perspective ,” arguing that news literacy shouldn’t be “just about getting the public to read our news but more about getting media to listen to the public.” To that end, we need newsrooms that are deeply engaged with their communities and we need active citizens who are equipped and empowered as creators, consumers, and collaborators.

We look forward to working with the News Integrity Initiative and organizations across the country to catalyze efforts to put people at the center of American journalism and do the hard work of building a more trustworthy public square for all.

Back to Ideas

Blog

NYU and De Correspondent Launch New Laboratory for Community Supported Investigative News

Josh Stearns

March 28, 2017

Rebuilding trust in journalism means rethinking the relationship between readers, revenue and reporting. That idea is at the heart of a new project launching today.

The Membership Puzzle Project, a collaboration between New York University and Dutch news site De Correspondent, will create a laboratory to study ways community engagement can strengthen investigative reporting and make journalism more sustainable. With $515,000 in funding from Democracy Fund, First Look Media and Knight Foundation, the Membership Puzzle Project will tackle specific problems and develop scalable solutions for developing strong membership programs, and share those lessons throughout the United States’ journalism landscape.

De Correspondent launched in the Netherlands with one of the largest crowdfunding campaigns in journalism and now has over 50,000 members paying $63 a year, with an 80 percent renewal rate. Their reader-funded $3.2 million budget supports 20 full time “correspondents” who work closely with their communities to report on issues of critical public interest. De Correspondent operates in the open, sharing their budget and decision-making transparently and building deep and diverse relationships with its community in ways that strengthen the reporting and the sustainability of the newsroom.

De Correspondent announced its expansion to the U.S. market today.

The site will be incubated at New York University for the first year, where professor Jay Rosen will help translate their model to the United States and convene leading thinkers and innovators from across U.S. to exchange ideas, spread best practices, and train people on both sides of the project. This two-way laboratory will serve as a catalyst for creating new ways of supporting and strengthening the Fourth Estate.

This project is part of more than $12 million in new grants dedicated to supporting a robust and free press announced by the Democracy Fund and our partners at First Look Media earlier this week. Other grants include $3 million each to the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity, and ProPublica, $800,000 to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and $500,000 to the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University. In addition, Democracy Fund announced a $1 million commitment to a new fund to invest in state and local investigative reporting.

A healthy democracy requires a free and robust press that responds to the needs of its communities and holds power to account. The critical role of the press in American democracy, as expressed in the First Amendment, is rooted in the information needs of communities which seek to be self-governing. At a time when the press is under attack and traditional business models continue to erode, the public becomes all the more central to securing and supporting the critical democratic function of journalism.

Democracy Fund’s investment in this project builds on more than $18 million in earlier grants which have focused on supporting a vibrant public square in America. We are particularly excited for how this project can dovetail with the work of the recently launched News Revenue Hub which is providing shared membership administration and strategy for small local newsrooms and topical reporting sites around the country. That work is already seeing profoundly exciting results and they will be core partners in the work with New York University and De Correspondent.

For Jay Rosen, one of the pioneers of civic journalism in the 1990s, this project is the culmination of years of work focused on putting people at the center of journalism. Ten years after Rosen dubbed the term “the people formerly known as the audience” this project asks, what is the social contract between journalists and the public that we need today? De Correspondent provides one answer to that question.

De Correspondent has shown that when newsrooms embrace the public as core to their work they can navigate through the stormy waters we are currently facing. Together we believe this project can help more newsrooms chart a path towards a robust future.

Back to Ideas

Blog

Panel: Promoting Voter Trust and Confidence in Elections

Democracy Fund

February 22, 2017

On February 17, 2017, at the National Association of Secretaries of State’s (NASS) annual winter conference, the Democracy Fund facilitated a panel discussion about the pressing need to bolster voter confidence in light of the intense scrutiny during 2016. “Promoting Voter Trust and Confidence in Elections” was a general session where panelists discussed ways election officials could boost voter confidence in our elections. Panelists included Colorado’s Republican Secretary of State, election experts, researchers and voter advocates. After discussing the results of surveys and evaluations, including a poll commissioned by the Democracy Fund, panelists took questions from the audience, which was comprised of state election officials, their aides, and invited guests from various stakeholder groups.

Featuring:

Hon. Wayne Williams, Colorado Secretary of State
Mr. David Becker, Executive Director, Center for Election Innovation and Research
Ms. Rosalind Gold, Sr. Director of Policy, Research and Advocacy, NALEO Educational Fund
Hon. Miles Rapoport, Senior Practice Fellow, Ash Center for Democratic Governance & Innovation, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
Mr. Samidh Chakrabarti, Product Manager for Civic Engagement, Facebook
Ms. Rebecca Mark, Vice President, Porter Novelli

Click here to watch the panel via CSPAN.

Related Research: Election Security and the 2016 Voter Experience (poll and infographic)

Back to Ideas

Blog

Introducing the new Local News Lab

Tom Glaisyer

February 10, 2017

We don’t know what the future of media and journalism holds, but we do know that no matter what technological, economic, or cultural shifts occur, a vibrant and resilient press is central to a healthy democracy. This is a priority of our work at the Democracy Fund. As we pursue efforts to strengthen local news and participation we want to share what we learn, provide an opportunity to highlight the work of our grantees, and engage with the community of people working on these issues.

In that spirit, today we are re-launching the Local News Lab as a testing ground for the future of journalism. The site will be managed by our Public Square Program as a resource for those working at the intersection of media and democracy. It will be a site of inquiry, experimentation, and learning where the Democracy Fund and its grantees and partners will explore new models, tools, and practices for creating a robust and diverse public square. Through the Local News Lab we will share what we learn, invite your input, and shine a spotlight on the people helping make journalism more sustainable, collaborative and engaged with its community.

The Local News Lab was originally developed by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation through a grant from the Knight Foundation. The Democracy Fund was also an early supporter of the Dodge Foundation’s work. We look forward to building on their pioneering work developing an ecosystem approach to transforming the landscape of local news in New Jersey and continuing to work with them as partners on this site.

As an introduction to the work of the Local News Lab, check out these featured posts and research:

Read the latest from the Lab: dive into a topic of your choice from community engagement to business models to philanthropy.
Let the Lab guide you: our new detailed guides offer advice on how to help newsrooms develop new revenue models.
Learn from the Lab: don’t miss this report on lessons learned in the first 18 months of experiments undertaken by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

You can still expect to find information about the Democracy Fund’s grantmaking around journalism, civic information, and participation here on our main website. The Local News Lab will focus, not on how to get a grant from Democracy Fund, but rather on what our grantees and partners are doing and learning in the world. As a systems change organization we are committed to learning, iterating, and partnering in ways that strengthen both our work and the field at large.

We understand that the challenges we face will take patience, and persistent and deep partnership. We see this as a chance to invite people into our work and be transparent about what we are trying and how it is working. Want to talk to us more about the Lab? Email us at localnewslab@democracyfund.org.

Back to Ideas

Blog

Transforming a Tradition: Rethinking Debates with Civic Hall

Tom Glaisyer

September 26, 2016

The 2016 election cycle has been described as unique or like no other. Clearly at the Presidential level this election has been unlike other recent cycles, but it is also remarkably different in another way: the public is getting much of their news beyond television broadcasts, and they are responding, sharing, and engaging with politics in ways they never have before.

It is this change in the nature of our communications that Civic Hall’s Rethinking Debates project seeks to explore. It does so, not blindly, nor in an “add technology and the world will be better” kind of way, but rather with the sense that given the opportunity to engage the public before, during, and after debates, we should use it to explore how people learn about candidates and their positions.

There is no question that the challenges for productive debates are significant. Political polarization in the United States is more pronounced. Americans now have shorter attention spans than a goldfish. The standard format of a televised debate has turned—despite the efforts of moderators no less experienced or skilled than in the past—into what one might describe as a three ring circus. The networks may be expecting massive viewership for the upcoming Presidential debates but its viewership that is partly driven by the sort of enthusiasm one has for a wrestling match rather than something Presidential. In a context where disillusionment within the electorate with politics and candidates is extensive it seems more likely that the debates will not inform, but incite, not engage, but aggravate, not clarify but confuse.

In spite of all that, debates continue to be a staple of the campaign season in many races. They are seen as a key test of a candidate, intellectually, temperamentally, even a candidates’ body language and wardrobe choices become the subject of countless post-debate news clips.

Several groups are working on this challenge. The Annenberg Public Policy Center formed a working group and issued a report advocating for multiple innovations in the debates. The Open Debate Coalition has also been advocating for specific reforms around the debate format. Democracy Fund’s grantee, the National Institute for Civil Discourse, also recently issued civility standards for candidate debates. Politifact will undoubtedly be fact-checking the claims made during the debate and the Internet Archive, also a grantee, is using its capacity to help journalists and the public see how TV covers debates.

The Democracy Fund’s Public Square Program focuses specifically on supporting efforts to help people understand and participate in the democratic process. We invested in Civic Hall’s work because, as their new report reminds us: “The debates are [the public’s] one opportunity in the campaign to see and hear the candidates speak directly to each other in a face-to-face encounter.”

In their extensive report, “Rethinking Debates: A Report On Increasing Engagement,” and at their recent mini-conference, Civic Hall brought together experts to explore technologies and platforms that have the potential to strengthen debates, increase their relevance, and ensure they continue to be central, but in different ways than in the past.

A few of the most promising ideas include:

CNN’s use of a technologically advanced auditorium and polling of an in-person audience to add nuance and immediate responses that could be fed back into the debate via the moderator seemed to successfully pair the strengths of a moderator and an advanced facility.
Google’s election hub, a platform developed in collaboration with Watchout a local organization in Taiwan. The platform allowed the public to generate questions for Presidential candidates. It elicited 6,500 questions that generated 220,000 votes and 5 questions were used in the debates.
At a state level: In New York, Silicon Harlem hosted a debate and utilized Microsoft’s Pulse tool and the above mentioned Open Debates Coalition had their question generation tool adopted for a debate in Florida. Both provided opportunities for the public in the United States to become more engaged in driving the questions used prior to and during the debate.

We hope that as this debate season gets underway we will see more examples both at the state and local and perhaps at the Presidential level that will be new models to follow if we’re to better serve the American public as they consider who they wish to vote for.

Click here to learn more about Civic Hall’s Rethinking Debates Project.

Back to Ideas

Blog

Bridging the Bicoastal Bubbles on Civic Tech

Chris Nehls

September 12, 2016

For all of their enormous clout globally, Washington and the San Francisco Bay Area can be pretty insular places. It’s a dynamic that’s reinforced by the know-it-all attitude of the dominant professional class of each. Washingtonians working in governmental circles think nobody understands politics like they do, while Bay Area tech professionals claim to be transforming humanity through lines of code.

I recently had the opportunity to travel to the Bay Area in an effort organized by the Lincoln Initiative to bring these two dynamic but distant communities closer together. They actually have much more in common than it seems: Plenty of Bay Area technologists are deeply passionate about government and politics, while D.C. supports a vibrant and growing civic tech scene. But the bicoastal bubbles still have a lot to learn from one another.

The Lincoln Initiative invited me and other D.C.-types on a tour of several Bay Area civic and political tech firms, including Crowdpac and Brigade. The leaders of these start-ups demonstrated a deep commitment for improving American politics by making public participation easier and more satisfying. They have developed sophisticated new online tools designed to draw more people into the political system and make it easier to find and organize like-minded fellow citizens. The scale of their ambition to help Americans re-engage with the democratic system is inspiring.

I was struck along my tour by how the tools these firms were developing focused on a single critical problem within the current political system, whether it be the dominance of mega-donors in campaign finance or the difficulty of building networks of like-minded voters. In the context of the Silicon Valley bubble’s fondness for elevator pitches of business plans, this makes sense (Brigade’s Matt Mahan, for example, described Brigade as the “LinkedIn for politics.”)

But few in Washington would take the approach that the difficulties of effective governance at the federal level can be solved by a killer app. Our system of government is shaped by countless competing priorities and power dynamics. Simply adding more of something to (or taking it out from) the system is unlikely to generate much change in a modern democracy.

Democracy Fund’s Governance Program, for example, learned in the process of constructing our systems map that problems of campaign finance and civic engagement combine with other factors to affect the performance of the federal system in complex ways. As some D.C.-based civic tech firms and nonprofits believe, there may be greater leverage in improving the responsiveness of federal politics by focusing first on solutions that can strengthen government institutions. Without doing so, devising new online tools to amplify the public’s voice simply adds more noise to an already cacophonous system.

Congress can be a peculiar and frustrating place. The perspective of Washington insiders can help Silicon Valley create tools that align with how the institution really works and how members and staff do their jobs. With this awareness, the enormous technical talent present in the Bay Area can better be brought to bear on the challenges facing our democracy.

The work of bridging the bicoastal bubbles on civic tech by groups like the Lincoln Initiative is a great first step in this effort. Hopefully in the near future, techies can leave their own bubbles and head east.

Back to Ideas

Blog

Mapping to Learn: Applying a Systems Lens to Local Journalism

Tom Glaisyer

March 28, 2016

This week we released a visualization and accompanying narrative that seeks to represent the dynamics facing local news institutions and levels of participation of the public in civic affairs.

Original reporting, informed dialogue, and rigorously argued differences of opinion all support engagement in our democratic processes in communities across the United States. Over the past decade, however, local news outlets have struggled. Audiences and advertisers have gravitated to digital and mobile platforms — and the economics of local news has declined. We are being left with media deserts in locations where coverage once flourished.

At the same time, promising local journalism experiments have cropped up across the country. Foundations and venture capitalists are investing not only in individual outlets, but in tools and models that can cut reporting costs and support civic engagement around breaking topics. How can such promising innovations be seeded widely and cultivated fully? These are the issues that the Democracy Fund’s Engagement Program has been grappling with.

Our Journey

Over the past year, we have consulted dozens of journalists and scholars of media and communications in an ambitious effort to create a map that reveals the many dimensions of local journalism’s disruption.

This process flows from the foundation’s larger commitment to understanding democracy as a complex system. At the core of our process is an extensive process of analysis and graphical mapping of the dynamics facing this space. As Democracy Fund President Joe Goldman explains “a systems map describes the dynamic patterns (or feedback loops) that occur in a system, whether they are vicious or virtuous cycles of behavior and reaction.” It is not, as Joe writes “a network map that describes how different individuals or organizations are connected to one another.”

The process of identifying and vetting such loops has been both long and profoundly iterative. Participants in the initial workshop held in March 2014 sketched some 43 loops representing different dynamics surrounding the failure and success of local news outlets to adequately inform and connect with their communities. Over a series of internal and one-on-one meetings, the Engagement team — Program Associate Paul Waters, Graduate Research Fellow Jessica Mahone, myself, and a dedicated set of fellows and consultants — winnowed the map down to tell a “core story” about key factors and connections.

Like panning for gold, these multiple conversations allowed the team to sift through many different layers of the problem to identify valuable elements. The result is not a picture of the optimal local news environment that we might want, or the debatably better environment we might have once had. Instead, it’s a multi-dimensional model of the intersecting forces that shape the markets, missions, and practices of outlets seeking to provide coverage that can help to drive democratic decisionmaking by both audiences and policymakers around the country.

Where We Are

The current map, which comprises 17 loops, hones in on the powerfully disruptive economic shifts that have unsettled legacy journalism outlets, and the hopeful but still nascent creative efforts to build sustainable digital tools and platforms for reporting and civic dialogue. The map identifies Internet adoption and evolution as the key “input factor” disrupting this system, and pinpoints three key factors central to a healthy local information ecosystem:

The shift in audience attention;
The relevance, quality, and quantity of state and local journalism; and
The engagement of the public in civic affairs.

Several related loops hone in on economic dynamics. Perhaps the most important is the decay in income from advertising as a result of news outlets no longer able to obtain the same rates or deliver the same audience reach they once did. In addition, large digital platforms are more able to capture significant portions of the remaining advertising revenue with increasingly sophisticated targeting technologies. The result these dynamics is that membership and philanthropic support for small to mid-sized news projects is increasingly important as is the role government dollars play in maintaining public broadcasting.

Other factors are at work, however, including the rise of user-generated content, the strength of connections between newsrooms and community members, and the fate of journalism skills in an era of mass newspaper layoffs. The map raises questions such as, can audiences trust reporters to recognize and represent their interests, and uncover corruption without sliding into sensationalism? Will outlets with small slices of the public increase hyper partisanship with narrowly targeted content aimed at reinforcing viewpoints rather than informing?

The map also recognizes the importance of policy decisions around online access and how they have fostered the growth of the Internet over recent decades. All of these dynamics and others are captured in this system map, and each loop is bolstered with research, case studies and both supporting and countervailing evidence.

Overall, we have to recognize that the local public square, which has for decades been sustained by a small number of newspapers, television and radio stations, is in turmoil and though it isn’t clear what will replace what was for decades a stable equilibrium it is very clear that change will be a constant over the upcoming decade.

Looking to the future

Like the dynamics it captures, the map is not static. It is a work in progress, designed to serve as tool for discussion and strategy not just within the foundation, but across the field. With this in mind, the Engagement Program worked with the American Press Institute to convene another room full of news experts, editors and reporters this past October. Many had seen the map more than once in its various iterations; others were “map newbies.” We led the room through each loop—probing for points of confusion or competing interpretations of various factors and connections. For us this was just the first step towards more engagement with communities of experts seeking to better inform and engage the public at the local level in our democracy. Ultimately, we hope this contributes to a stronger shared understanding of the field.

How can you assist?

We recognize that as a relatively small organization we will gain a better understanding of the field by soliciting input from others. We also realize that this is a quickly shifting field and we intend to stay in learning mode as the map evolves. This prompts us to continue to engage with the widest range of people working in the realm of local news and participation: What else does the Democracy Fund need to know or understand to better illuminate the dynamics of local news ecosystems?

If your work relates to local news and participation, we welcome and encourage you to take some time to explore the map and dig into the definitions of the loops, factors, and connections. Help us improve its breadth and accuracy.

Please send us your ideas and feedback by emailing newsmap@democracyfund.org.