Glenn Reynolds relates a conversation he had with a journalist who was wondering (as in: he’s writing about it, which is what reporters do when they wonder) if weblogs have elevated the political debate.

The journalist seemed skeptical, and so am I. But that’s because he was asking the wrong question.

Here’s a better one: Do weblogs provide a basis for helping readers form more-authentic opinions than those they could achieve by relying only on legacy media?

And another one: Do they provide a platform for dialogue (rather than just passing along publicity) that the legacy media has never adequately addressed?

And, just so I can keep us talking about marketing and communications: Does the perceived authenticity of the few increasingly trump the dollar-driven publicity of the many in determining public perception?

On those points, the answer isn’t just “yes.” It’s “hell yes.”

Dialogue vs. publicity
Naysaying in American policy and politics has grown louder for years on the basis of a common (and mistaken) refrain: Americans are apathetic about public life. Furthermore, a sense of civic duty is dead or dying; most people no longer participate in the issues of the day other than single-issue ranters and hot-blooded partisans.

But what if the public wasn’t really disinterested? What people just thought the interlocking machinery of legacy media, sound-bite political platforms and telelobbying via massive political ad buys simply wasn’t engaging because it didn’t reflect their own decisionmaking process?

And what if something better came along?

I don’t have poll numbers to back this up, but I’ve been doing the community-engagement thing long enough to know some truths:

• » Americans are not apathetic, but they feel impotent when it comes to politics and public policy. Many citizens believe they have been pushed out of the planning, policy and political processes by lobbyists, politicians and the media, and left little room to make a difference.
• » Citizens will get involved if they believe they can make a difference. The compact many Americans subscribe to is fairly simple, but devastating from a traditional political and policy viewpoint: The majority of people will get involved if they believe there will be at least the possibility to personally contribute to change.
• » Reconnecting citizens and policymaking will take more than tinkering with the system. Citizens want to be more than bystanders who are told the policy game is open and fair — they want a way to participate in public life themselves, and they want something beyond ballot iniatives or highly packaged national electoral politics.

If that sounds like a steep challenge for policymakers, it should.

A conventional approach to public engagement is based on publicity. Public agencies, stakeholder groups politicians or other players stake out positions and try to sell the public through shotgun approaches and packaged sound bites.

Yet the process of publicizing a plan to sell it isn�t the process under which most of us form our opinions. That process demands interaction with peers — particularly peers who share our values, but also those who we may strongly disagree with. Stop thinking: “used car sales” and start thinking “jury room deliberation” — messy, passionate, sometimes organized and more often nearly chaotic — when you think of genuine public engagement.

Forming genuine opinions on matters of public life also involves emotion. One of the biggest disservices 20th (and now, 21st) century media saddled us with is the notion that objectivity trumps all other cards. Dialogue that matters — whether it’s with someone over the back fence or someone you get into a shouting match with at a political rally — always carries an emotional component.

People don’t flock to talk radio or the blogosphere because they’re all ideological robots; they go there because they want to talk to each other. We don’t have civic squares, we don’t have worthwhile town hall meetings and we’re afraid to talk to people on the subway — but people want to swap ideas, they want to forge their own notions of what matters in a crucible of other opinions and they want to be heard before the last gavel sounds or the last vote is counted.

Weblogs, talk radio, e-mail listservers and other new tools of engagement are powerful precisely because they’re filling void that has grown for years in our civic lives.

The tactics of publicizing issues, from pressure campaigns to political hit mail to lobbying, all have their uses. But they don’t constitute the process most people use if they’re walking through a decision making process on their own. That process relies on the experiences of others, on the understanding that emotions play a role and that there’s a lot of gray between black and white.

Once, this basic process of discussion, discovery and interaction was conducted in town squares, at community meetings and over backyard fences. And while those discussions still take place, they are fewer today because we are a more hurried, insulated society.

Maybe weblogs don’t elevate the political debate in the way legacy media think is appropriate (Better op-eds! Everyone has a voice! All opinions carry equal weight!), but for a growing number of people, the new town square looks a lot like the web browser.

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