Hacking civil society

 

 (Image from Charlie Chaplin, The Circus)

I've been saying - explicitly since at least 2013 - that the digital policy environment and the digital ecosystem are civil society's domains.


This article on why the Russians might hack the boy scouts spells out the same point fairly clearly.

Civil society exists in and depends on digital data, gadgets, and infrastructure. We rely on the norms and policies that shape the digital environment, are able to use digital tools to advance our goals, and are subject to the manipulation and sabotage of digital spaces.

The "Russians hacking boy scouts" is a great headline to make the point. Anyone with a desire to manipulate opinions - which includes advertisers, hackers, politicians, extremists, ideologues and all kinds of others - knows that our digital dependencies make it easier than ever to do so through supposedly trustworthy institutions, like nonprofits and "news" sites. In a time of information warfare everyone and every institution operating in the digital space is potentially on the battlefield - intentionally or unwittingly.

Practical, immediate meaning of this for every nonprofit? Your digital presence - website, communication on social media, outreach emails, everything - exists in an information ecosystem that is being deliberately polluted with misinformation all day, every day, on every issue. If your communications strategy still assumes that "hey, they'll trust us - we're a nonprofit" or "hey, this is what the data say" then I recommend you reconsider both what you say, how you say it, how you protect what you say, and your expectations and responses to how what you say gets heard and gets used.

You may well be speaking truth. However, the digital "room" you are speaking it into is one filled with deliberate, diffuse distractions and detractors (at the very least). It's like trying to show someone a clear picture in a room full of fun house mirrors. It's time civil society started "assuming" (as in taking as a starting point) that the digital environment in which it exists is one of distortion and distrust and start building effective, trusted, and meaningful strategies from there (instead of being surprised each time things go wrong).