“Getting your message out is getting harder.”
People are not paying attention in the same ways. We are consuming content in a variety of new and somewhat closed off ways. Town hall meetings, debates in the public square, and local newspapers are being replaced by localized feeds from trendy applications. Advertising executives are not the only ones to figure out how hard it is to capture the attention of the public mind. People in charge of political campaigns are aware of the harsh reality that talking to large crowds is getting harder and harder. Achieving large contact rates can become cost prohibitive very quickly. The United States Census POPClock projection website states that, “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the resident population of the United States, projected to 10/08/12 at 00:53 UTC (EST+5) is 314,534,943.”
The now concluded by generally popular television show American Idol recieved between 20 and 30 million viewers per episode. Each episode of American Idol has a contact rate of 6.35% to 9.53% of the American population. Super Bowl XLII that featured the New York Giants vs. New England Patriots was watching by about 48.66 million people. Only 15.47% of the American population watched the game. Both American Idol and the Super Bowl are outliers in terms of viewership. Most events have much smaller crowds.
Influencing and organizing are skills that can help bring crowds together on a micro scale. Brining crowds together on a macro scale is becoming increasingly difficult. Communities are becoming increasingly specialized. People used to organize themselves into communities of place, circumstance, and interest. Civil society could be measured from community to community. The unit of analysis was relatively stable. Just as the velocity of money has increased. The velocity of community organization has increased. Instead of having one common social fabric that unites a nation a new patchwork of high velocity communities form and dissolve without hesitation or pause.
