Americans’ trust in their government — or more precisely our system of government and how well it works — has been in a free fall since 2008, with a steady decline of ten percentage points in just two years,  a full 30 percent decline since the period just before 911.  The proper role of government has apparently become a serious concern to most of us, perhaps as a result of  measures taken by the Bush and Obama administrations to bail out failing major multi-national corporations through aid and guarantees and other actions many of which were vastly unpopular.

Gallup found that our satisfaction with economic, moral, and governmental aspect of society has also dropped  significantly as the financial crisis evolved over the last three years.

Not surprisingly, the public’s dissatisfaction with major corporations has plummeted as well. Today 67% of Americans are dissatisfied with the size and influence of corporations in the U.S., a new high, a 21-point increase since 2001.

Overall satisfaction with the opportunity for a person in the U.S. to get ahead by hard work has dropped 21 percent since 2001, followed by 11 percent drop in overall quality of life and 17 percent decline in satisfaction with “U.S. morality” since 2002.  Obviously none of this bodes well for the nation long term and  continued political polarization and negative corporate press will only further erode confidence in America’s fundamental institutions. President Obama’s theme of ‘winning the future’ drove his State of the Union address this week, but soon many Americans will be asking, “winning the future for whom?”

As the incoming administration prepares it’s ambitious and optimistic agenda, high on the to do list has to be the huge issue of outsourcing state liquor and wine stores from a pubic to private retail and wholesale operation.  For decades many administrations have attempted and failed to reform the antiquated state liquor control system; but the Corbett Administration, for a variety of ‘perfect storm’ reasons, will likely succeed where others have failed or given up.

What does this mean over the near term?  It will take years, probably two just to draft the legislation and ameliorate the array of national and international interests at play in this multi-billion dollar state industry.  And that means tens of millions of dollars to be spent in lobby efforts by all sides in Pennsylvania, enough juice to lift the spirits of Harrisburg players well into the next election cycle.  The last issue with this kind of economic clout and lobbying legs was the Slots-Track issue, which is still playing out in Harrisburg and took six years of intense lobbying to get through the legislative mill.

Look for sides to line up early on this lightening rod issue.  If incoming Governor Corbett can pull this off, he will open the door to much needed structural changes everywhere in PA state and local government. He could prove to be the most innovative governor in PA contemporary history.

Naomi Klein is a well known author and political activist who happens to be a Facebook Friend of mine.  She no doubt enjoys a large, probably broad-based Twitter following as well.  The problem is her Tweets end up on my Facebook page.  So throughout the day, as Ms. Klein responds to all kinds of positive and negative Tweets, her short, often terse, then later apologetic Tweets, appear completely out of context on Facebook.

I’ve always found Ms. Klein a personable, intelligent, engaging public figure, but lately the image coming through in clipped sentences filled with anxiety and terseness is a slightly different “perception.”  This is unfair of course, but the point is that  Ms. Klein (or her surrogate) has completely overlooked the difference in communications context, message, and nuance, Twitter  v. Facebook.

Content, after all, is the medium in social media — so messaging needs to be targeted and coordinated appropriately to adapt to varying platforms and social sites.  This is relatively easy to do.  It’s usually a matter of editing the same message to fit particular formats.  When Tweeting, don’t assume a Facebook audience will react similarly.  The demographics are different. Image, perception, positioning change rapidly among social media users, and content, which ultimately shapes opinion, has to be edited to be affective.

Who Tweets?

Eight percent of people who use the internet — tens of millions — are Twitter users and they are mostly young adults, minorities, and urban dwellers.  Here’s quick update on who they are.  For more details click here.

A series of recent news articles focused negatively on the assertion that  ”children of technology” are “lost in cyberspace,” and the constant stream of new technology provides “a profound challenge to focusing and learning.” But technology is a neutral, amoral force, created by human intelligence in the most advanced sub-cultures on the planet, and available relatively easily to virtually most, if not all, humans everywhere.

Technology — particularly the market-driven technology that delivers communication, research and democratic (community building, idea exchanging) capabilities to any relatively isolated individual — is always a menace to the status quo, and probably no more so than when technology disturbs the inculcation of societal mores on the individual student within the ‘teen tribe’ environment.

Technology renders the societal playground level, so to speak.

The first threat to any status quo is not to a student’s capacity to focus and learn in the abstract, but the student’s early discovery of what is “useful information” as opposed to “propaganda” in the irrational aspects of any socialization process, regardless the particular cultural context.  Where is any student likely to find an accurate analysis of the U.S. invasion of Iraq for example?  In a public school civics class, or in an online discussion with peers (perhaps Iraqi peers) globally, networked through a social site like, say, Facebook?

How does a Saudi student, armed with contemporary individual global technology, come to terms with the profoundly unethical treatment of women under Saudi law? How does a catholic youth, aware of the global Aids situation, compute the latest stance of the Pope on contraceptive use?

For every negative critique of the distraction and misuse of social media among any student base, there’s an antithetical finding that shows students accelerate learning when class study incorporates web-driven individual study and research programs, rather than old-fashioned group classes with an authority figure “teaching.”  Both education methods are essential to the individual accumulation of knowledge and skill. For every study that shows a decline in reading and writing skills in tested environments, there’s another report that shows students read more on line (material they are actually interested in) and write (type skillfully) constantly throughout the day.

Vishal Singh, 17, often chooses time on his computer over doing homework. Vishal, whose lighting gear is on the bed, is an aspiring filmmaker. (NYTimes.com)

The challenge facing any educational process now is to provide the kind of meaningful information that is relevant and credible to contemporary students,  in formats that accommodate the efficiencies and scope of advancing individual technology.  IT functionality in the classroom will always lag behind the immediacy of  individual technology, particularly in the hands of  the next emerging tribe of teenagers who are instinctively drawn more to each other than to any status quo.

When an educational system and prevailing status quo become irrational, inhumane, or dysfunction, however, this youthful and natural critique is even more prevalent.  Fear not; there’s another generational tribe forming as we speak.  A friend of mine’s 8-year old recently questioned the need to learn handwriting in his class with the statement, “don’t you know handwriting is obsolete!” His comment was met  with incomprehension by the teacher and instant applause from his young classmates.

Former Alaska Governor and  2008 vice presidential candidate Sara Palin was profiled in last Sunday’s New York Time Magazine, “as arguably the most captivating and influential Republican in America — and therefore a viable contender for the presidential nomination in 2012.”  But is she running?

Sara Palin is one key to the success of the Republican party in the mid-term elections. She is featured in next Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

“I am,” Ms. Palin told Times writer Robert Draper.  ”I’m engaged in the internal deliberations candidly, and having that discussion with my family, because my family is the most important consideration here.”

How’s she doing?  She’s raised more than $10 million for Republican candidates in the last election and was a lightening rod for consolidating the tea party base of the new populist-corporate Republican party. So she seems to have moved beyond the “wreckage of the 2008 presidential campaign” and a much-derided resignation as governor.  But a few challenges persist.

An ABC News / Washington Post poll last month found Palin’s favorability rating among registered voters stood at 39%, while 54% viewed her unfavorably, and 67% found her unqualified to be president. Ms. Palin responded, “I know that a hurdle I would have to cross, that some other potential candidates wouldn’t have to cross right out of the chute is proving my record. That’s the most frustrating thing for me — the warped and perverted description of my record and what I’ve accomplished over the last two decades. It’s been much more perplexing to me than where the lamestream media has wanted to  go about my personal life. And other candidates haven’t faced these criticisms the way I have.”

She has plenty of time to completely reposition her image for a serious run at the nomination.

As smoke clears on the mid-term elections and a sweeping victory for Republicans in Harrisburg, leadership now has to face an uncertain future with a new unified agenda, one driven by an aggressive, ambitious new administration working across a variety of issues to demand more efficient government and dramatically grow Pennsylvania’s economy.

The public expects lower taxes, increased government efficiency at every level, and faster, much faster job creation. The public expects affordable public education and a balanced budget. The public expects better infrastructure and lower health care costs. The issues haven’t changed in a decade.

One way into the morass of rusty decline in Pennsylvania is to take a close look at information technology already in place to address a couple of  low hanging (and enormously costly) issues. Consolidation of state government data processes, integration of local governments into a state-wide IT network, under a state cabinet level CIO, like California, New York, and other states have established.  Technology integration is accelerating and soon will be essential to any progress across the most important segments of  American culture.

Take a look, for example,  at a regional network of PA HIEs –Pennsylvania Healthcare Information Exchanges — as in, get all the patient data in one place and provide access to it, starting with the patient, through the physician to the hospital, specialist, insurer and employer. Start with defined regions, when everything is up and running, go statewide.  Sounds easy. But it takes leadership with a vision and policy clout to work it through an increasingly dysfunctional political system.  The electorate has handed the clout to Pennsylvania’s new leadership. A single party can now drive policy.

Efficient IT cost savings run into billions over time, but it takes leadership to move a fundamental systemic restructuring.  Precisely the kind of leadership the people of Pennsylvania brought to power in the recent election. So, as we await a new leadership agenda, a viable initiative for the future of Pennsylvania, it will be interesting to see which sectors among the broader  special interests community are first up with ideas that actually initiate a new future for Pennsylvania.

President Obama will be quoted in next Sunday’s N.Y. Times Magazine cover story about a number of issues including tactical lessons learned in his first two years in office.  Number one on his miss list, the president  said he and his team took “a perverse pride” in focusing on policy while ignoring the need to sell it to the country and that he realizes now, “you can’t be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.”  The administration has been out maneuvered in my view by Republicans on virtually every major issue throughout its first two years.  The president said he let himself be cast too much like a “tax and spend Democrat” and he realized too late that “there is no such thing as a shovel-ready project.”

He says the next two years will focus less on ambitious legislation and more on implementation of what was passed. In the same piece, Gov. Ed Rendell is quoted as offering a brisk assessment of President Obama’s first two years: “B-plus, A-minus on substantive accomplishments and a D-plus or C-minus on communication.” He’s quoted saying the president needed to pull back on the blame game. “After the election, I’d say no more pointing back, no more blaming the Bush administration. It’s O.K. to do that during the campaign and then stop. But to do it as much as we do it, it sounds like a broken record. And after two years, you own it.”  Look for the Peter Baker article in the Sunday Times.

Perception management begins with understanding how “perceptions” are shaped and stabilized. This is a process specific to a client’s particular “perception environment,” that is the way the client (product, service, image, etc.) is perceived (positively or negatively) from several shifting perspectives.

This usually involves certain target groups (customers, distributors, competitors, consumers, etc) and their current perceptions, given the client. There can also be a “media” to be considered which might consist of targeted trade publications, professional journals, trade or industry organizations and so forth, or mass media. Establishing an “image” (or widely accepted perceptions) is always easier that changing (correcting, defending) the image later.

This is usually involves a three-phased process which includes image research, a re-positioning strategy, and implementation of the plan over time.  Metrics for evaluation include post-research, which often replicates the image research in phase one to measure any shift or re-positioning that has occurred.  Perception management is an ongoing process of stabilizing the “contentment ” or “satisfaction”  level of the targeted groups within which the client’s perceived image is operative. In commercial contexts contentment and perception directly benefit or menace revenue streams.

Targeting the for-profit blog is no easy game. At least two revenue streams need to be in place: first content good enough to harvest an audience (market) and second, click-through volume that converts to ad revenue. Blogs are all about content, a driver for visitors (subscribers) who become a market for advertising networks. So if the target audience is let’s say local culture consumers, you have to have a fix on what drives those consumers to culture.

The psychology of the “drive” is the premise for content. Let’s say the target market (demographic) turns out for book signings, art exhibits, independent film openings, lectures on humanities, and all within a given geographical radius.  Content begins to take shape already, and so does the premise for potential advertisers and subscribers. What’s missing?

niching the blog

A reason to visit the blog, (which by the way we’re now calling, “kultcom.net” for obvious reasons).  So we add a layer of  coupons and discounts for various events and products, as well as a link based calendar of culture-related events along with well written arts reviews, video interviews and news items covering the arts and associated institutions — all locally based and produced.

There’s an entire world of locally generated “culture” out there — from food to philosophy — happening within any zip code that connects universities, high-tech industry, museums, local history and politics. Next step, locating data bases of potential bloggers and bringing them to the site.  This is called “awareness and branding.” Successfully niching a Blog is a matter of creative contexting, building a business model that delivers a competitive ROI, and attracting capital and talent to the plan.  Perception management is the most important element at every step in the niche blog building process.