Influentials
According to a study by the Institute for Policy, Democracy, and the Internet, influentials "tell others what to buy, who to work for, and where to go to vacations." But what exactly makes a person an influential?
The answer is not as much as you may think. To be considered an influential you only need to participate in three out of eleven acts in a year, including a public town hall meeting, working for a political party, making a speech, serving on a committee or organization, attending a political protest or rally, writing a letter to the editor and a few other tasks.
To be honest, I think it is a little sad that you really have to do that little to be an influential and to help affect the choices that others make. I think that it just goes to show you again how little average people actually have to do with the democratic process. For GSPM students like myself, I fulfill most of these qualifications numerous times in a year. To me it is second nature to participate in the democratic process, whether it be by attending a political rally, working for my party or going to hear a candidate speak.
However, to many people it is not second nature to do any of these things. I feel that so-called influentials like myself, need to do a better job in getting people involved in these activities.
The answer is not as much as you may think. To be considered an influential you only need to participate in three out of eleven acts in a year, including a public town hall meeting, working for a political party, making a speech, serving on a committee or organization, attending a political protest or rally, writing a letter to the editor and a few other tasks.
To be honest, I think it is a little sad that you really have to do that little to be an influential and to help affect the choices that others make. I think that it just goes to show you again how little average people actually have to do with the democratic process. For GSPM students like myself, I fulfill most of these qualifications numerous times in a year. To me it is second nature to participate in the democratic process, whether it be by attending a political rally, working for my party or going to hear a candidate speak.
However, to many people it is not second nature to do any of these things. I feel that so-called influentials like myself, need to do a better job in getting people involved in these activities.
2 Comments:
On the contrary however, I think that this also demonstrats just how little effort it does take to be more involved. If more people simply took the time to just write a letter, or go to a rally, they too would be playing an active and possibly influential role in our system.
You don't have to be the Chief of Staff for a Senator, or Government Affairs Coordinator for a Lobbyist to be an influential. But you also can't just be some guy sitting on his couch.
If I want to be a car, I'm certainly not going to ask the guy at Ford which car to buy. He has a vested interested in it, he is TOO involved in the process to be objective.
I'm also not going to ask someone who has never driven before.
I'm going to ask a friend who fixes cars on the side, maybe he reads Automotive magazines on a regular basis. Is he an expert? No, but he is an accumulator of the type of knowledge I am seeking and he has a far greater chance of being more objective than an "expert" who maybe partial to one car company or another.
I think Damien makes a valuable point. Most of us are people that are so involved in the political process that we are detached from the reality of political involvement.
We need people who are not involved in the political process. We need people who have never been and influential. Those are people that we target, those are the people that can determine an election, and those are the 1/3 of the people in the middle that make the biggest difference when we energize them.
Post a Comment
<< Home