PERSPECTIVE - Social Media Manipulation: Worse than Advertising?

by Carrie Titolo I want to preface this by saying I’m not that old, but I still clearly remember life before social media (I was in college just as Facebook was born). Social media came about because of a demand for a network and personal connections that defied physical location. Facebook originally started as an online networking site just for college students (you actually needed a .edu email address to register), but what it has morphed into is an entirely different beast.

What was once grassroots and organic now feels contrived, forced and flashy. With more paid content on your news feed than actual posts from your friends, and the rampant use of photo editing software rendering images of ourselves unrecognizable, I can’t help but think that we should be just as skeptical and wary of social media as we are of traditional advertising.

Consumers and celebrities alike have maligned the mainstream media and advertising industry for decades, criticizing them for photo manipulation and perpetuating false and unrealistic beauty standards, especially for women. A 2011 study conducted by Dove found that 80% of women surveyed felt insecure when seeing photos of celebrities in the media. Of the woman surveyed, 71% of them did not believe their own appearances were attractive or stylish in comparison to cover models. In spite of our rampant criticism of these practices, we’ve begun using social media and photo editing apps to create the same deception.

Consider the slew of apps dedicated to photo editing and the sheer number of users employing them on a daily basis to shape up their selfies. There’s PhotoWonder with the tagline “Shaping charming faces and slim bodies in the easiest way” which has over 100 million users in 218 countries. Then there’s Spring, which helps manipulate photos to make the object more model-esque: taller, thinner and with a sharper jawline. FaceTune and CreamCam remove wrinkles, zits, and skin imperfections while SkinnyCamera promises to make you look 10 to 20 pounds lighter. There are so many ways to tweak and change a photo, we might as well use computer generated caricatures or animation and save ourselves the hassle.

With such an abundance of DIY image-altering resources, the deeper, more philosophical issue comes in the eyes of the beholder. Knowing what we now know, we can’t help but look at all photos with a critical eye. Whether it’s a vacation selfie your cousin posted or that photo of Ronda Rousey on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, we automatically assume what we’re seeing isn’t real and the image has been doctored (especially in the latter example). It is this skepticism that causes me to take pause. Didn’t we take to the Twitter-sphere because we wanted to avoid being misled and blatantly marketed to? That’s not what (Facebook) friends are for!

So what to do now that we’ve dug ourselves into a hole of disenchantment and cynicism? How do we reclaim the digital territory that once was ours? I wish I had the answer. I don’t think there’s a silver bullet that will fix everything, but perhaps we can start on an individual level by taking a vow of honesty when it comes to our social media accounts. Maybe if we all try to be genuine with the images we post and encourage our friends to do the same, we can turn this perfectly toned and blemish-free boat around. Maybe one day, we’ll even come to appreciate the imperfections that not only make us unique, but make us human. #nofilter.

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Carrie Titolo is a graduate of the Boston University College of Communication, and has a background in public relations, marketing and nonprofit communications. She loves to cook and bake, is an avid runner and enjoys spending time with her husband and two rescue dogs.

PERSPECTIVE commentaries by contributing writers appear each Sunday on Connecticut by the Numbers.

LAST WEEK: Survey Data: Not What It Used to Be

Editorial Cartoon by Bob Englehart

PERSPECTIVE: Survey Data; Not What It Used to Be

by Michelle Riordan-Nold In public debate, I increasingly hear the phrase: data-driven decision making. At CTData part of our core mission includes advocating for the public availability of data to inform policymaking. But what does it really mean and what data are we talking about?

As people increasingly use data to inform business or policy decisions, the quality of that data becomes even more important. Using data responsibly is something creators and users need to take seriously. Part of this includes understanding the drawbacks of data collection methodologies.

I recently attended the Association of Public Data Users conference where several of the speakers discussed the increasing unreliability of survey data.

As it turns out, most of what we know in social science comes from surveys of households. For example, the unemployment rate, poverty rate, rate of inflation are all collected through household surveys. Federal household surveys are used to make macroeconomic policy, they are used in indexing government benefits, and in determining tax brackets.

Surveys tell us a host of factors about people's lives, including: what people are doing in response to government programs, their level of education and employment, and how they spend their money, just to name a few. They tell us how the economy is operating and how government programs are working or not working. However, rarely do we talk about the challenges and deficiencies of survey data, yet we rely very heavily on this data for decision making.

Surveys as an instrument for collecting reliable data are deteriorating. Over time, as Bruce Meyer, the McCormick Foundation Professor at Chicago Harris, notes, people are "less willing to participate in surveys, less willing to answer the questions, and when providing answers people are less likely to give accurate answers than they did in past. People are over surveyed." Frankly, the allure of being surveyed and giving your opinion is no longer a thrill.

As the saying goes, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.' The chart below, taken from a recent paper by Meyer, shows that the non-response rate for five key national household surveys has been creeping up over the years. People are not responding that they receive government services even when they actually are the recipients of government programs.

But it's not just a problem of people not responding, it is also an issue that the information they provide is also quite poor. Meyer's research revealed that

"in our most used survey, that's the source of official income and poverty statistics, only about half of people receiving food stamps report it, under 40% of those receiving cash assistance report it. If you want to know who is poor you get a very bad picture from just surveys alone."

How did he figure this out? Professor Meyer linked the main household survey data to government program data (also known as administrative data). In a secure research data center, using anonymized data, he was able to look at what a recipient says in a survey to what the recipient is actually receiving.

"In surveys, the poverty rate looks much higher than what it really is; second these programs look less effective than what they are because much of the receipt is missing; in addition it looks like people who you think should be receiving these programs aren't."

What does this mean for policy?

On the one hand, it makes it look like the poor are doing much worse than they are. It also makes government programs look less effective than they are.

Meyer was involved in federal legislation that called for the establishment of a commission to look into ways that administrative data could be made more widely available to administrative agencies to determine whether programs should be expanded or contracted and to provide access to researchers both inside and outside government. The commission would be staffed by program or data experts, experts on data confidentiality and security, and with equal appointments from the House, Senate, and White House.

If these statistics were found to be so unreliable at the national level; what does it mean for Connecticut?

Relying on survey data is no longer a reliable measurement tool. It is time to look at the administrative data and examine the effectiveness of state government programs. This can be done. It should be easier with the passage last year of Public Act 15-142 that gives the Office of Policy and Management authority to link agency data and provide it to public researchers, as well as with the continued development of the P20-WIN data sharing initiative.

In order for policymakers to make 'data-driven decisions' we need to:

1. define the outcomes desired by government programs;
2. ensure the data are being collected to measure efficacy;
3. analyze the data to measure the programs; and
4. take action on the research results to ensure efficient allocation of resources.

However, this requires good administrative data that must come from those administering the programs. Let's get a commission together to ask the questions, determine the needs, and analyze the data.

With the fiscal challenges the State is facing, it's important that policymakers ensure that dollars are well spent and government programs are working. Access to better data can only lead to better government decisions.

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Michelle Riordan-Nold is Executive Director of the Connecticut Data Collaborative

PERSPECTIVE commentaries by contributing writers appear each Sunday on Connecticut by the Numbers.

LAST WEEK:  The State Budget:  What Do Demographics Have to Do With It?

Editorial Cartoon by Bob Englehart

PERSPECTIVE: The State Budget: What Do Demographics Have to Do With It?

by Alissa DeJonge A combination of factors are having a negative impact on state revenues, contributing to budget woes. The different age cohorts in Connecticut’s population tell an important story of one reason revenues are declining. State legislators need to examine Connecticut’s current and future demographics as they look to solve fiscal problems.

Much of the daily news centers on the state budget deficit and the lengths that legislators are attempting to go to find ways to balance it. There is a projected $220 million shortfall for this fiscal year that was addressed by legislators on March 29.[1] And the projected shortfall for the next fiscal year is approaching $1 billion.

Legislators are quite aware that revenues are not coming in to the extent originally anticipated, and that this trend has been occurring for the past number of years. Indeed, Senator Beth Bye, during a March 23 conference about broadband infrastructure,[2] discussed the revenue woes and the dire situation that Connecticut is facing.

What makes this situation particularly serious is the fact that the reasons there is a ‘revenue problem’ have been long in the making, and the trend is poised to continue.

Of course, the overall state economy continues to struggle. Connecticut is one of 10 U.S. states that has not regained all the jobs lost since the last recession.[3] If jobs are sluggish, so too are revenues back to the state. And wage growth, while seeing improvements in 2015, has been relatively flat since the end of the last recession, which also keeps state revenues in a static to declining state.[4]

However, the lack of revenues also involves overall demographic patterns. The figure shows population by age for Connecticut between 2005 and 2015, and projections extending to 2030.

• The age group over 65 is projected to increase 38% between 2015 and 2030. This will add much pressure to state services such as Medicaid and long term supports and services while at the same time reducing revenues because this large age cohort is no longer working.
• The Baby Boomer generation, those who are currently 45-64 years old, comprise the largest share of the state’s population. As they move from employment to retirement, the trend of increasing service needs and lessening revenues will accelerate.
• Generation Xers will fill many Boomer jobs, but they are a much smaller group, which means that state revenues are unlikely to regain their previous higher levels because fewer people will be producing outputs.
• The current Millennials (roughly ages 15-34 years) and the even younger Generation Z population have more people in their age groups then the Generation Xers. Therefore, demographic trends should eventually contribute to increasing state revenues. But it will be well over a decade before the Millennials begin to gain seniority and higher wages in the workforce and contribute more to the state revenues.

This figure shows how taxable income ebbs and flows by age group. The Baby Boomers are in the best position to contribute to state revenues right now. However they are retiring in a consistent fashion, and the next younger cohort, of which there are fewer people to begin with, is earning less than their mature counterparts. This sets up a long-term issue for state revenue potential, one that will not be mitigated until the larger Millennial age cohort gets into their more profitable working years.

Revenue expectations are not what they used to be. In the 1960s, the economy consistently grew between three and five percent each year, and Americans assumed that it would continue to grow at that pace.  As a result, government was able to fund additional programs as economic and tax bases kept expanding. Today the economy is growing at only around two percent each year. This economic trend reduces the ability for the government to fund programs, and all demands cannot be met, with the current revenues coming in.[5]

If you multiply the taxable income per return by the number of people in each demographic group in both 2015 and 2030, excluding inflation, there would be a four percent decrease in the projected total amount of taxable income in the state.  This illustrates the effect of demographic trends on taxable income. Without even considering job trends, wage trends, or other long-term economic factors, the demographic shifts of the population are going to make it even more challenging for state governments to raise revenues.

The state revenue problem will not resolve itself with this legislative session, or even the next. While the current revenue problems are a combination of many factors, the demographic influence is significant and should not be overlooked because it can provide insight for decades into the future.

Since there are a number of longer term, structural issues that will continue to affect the state’s ability to raise revenues for many years, stakeholders and policymakers will have to adjust to this new economic reality. Prioritization of programs with specific intended targeted outcomes is the approach to the state budgeting process needed now.

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Alissa DeJonge is Vice President of Research, Connecticut Economic Resource Center Inc. (CERC).

PERSPECTIVE commentaries by contributing writers appear each Sunday on Connecticut by the Numbers.

LAST WEEK: Freedom's Just Another Word For... 

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[1] http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/Vote-on-State-Budget-Deficit-Expected-Tuesday-373779281.html (Accessed March 29, 2016)

[2] High-Speed Broadband Internet Infrastructure Informational Conference: A Toolbox for Municipalities (March 23, 2016)

[3] http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2016-03-25/job-totals-trail-pre-recession-levels-in-10-us-states (Accessed March 29, 2016), from U.S. DOL calculations of jobs changes, December 2007 – February 2016.

[4] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/8/comptroller-connecticut-wage-growth-continues-to-l/ (Accessed March 29, 2016)

[5] Robert Samuelson, Trump’s Wrong – We’re Hugely Well-Off (Op-Ed), The Hartford Courant, March 28, 2016.

Editorial Cartoon by Bob Englehart

Editorial Cartoon by Bob Englehart

PERSPECTIVE: Freedom’s Just Another Word For…

by Rich Hollant

Music.

Around the time the State of Connecticut and the City of Hartford were releasing bleak news of their respective budgets, Joey Batts, a Hartford Public School teacher, released a video wherein for 3 minutes 22 seconds he sang his heart out about his affection for the Capital City. The ditty was entitled, “Hartbeat: A Love Letter for Hartford”. You should give a listen—you’ll be inspired. Set against a gritty-yet-hopeful portrayal of our streets, Joey Batt’s rhymes didn’t look at the Hartford neighborhoods with rose-colored glasses, but rather with objectivity brought to focus by real love. At this writing, the video has 1,083 shares on social media and has accrued 54,921 unique views—that’s nearly half our city. Imagine that.

Dance.

At about the same time, I was paying attention to Arien Wilkerson, the 20-something artistic director of the Hartford-based troop, Tnmot Aztro. His ensemble had been dazzling audiences with wildly collaborative and awe-inspiring feats of syncopated brilliance. As the budget news dominated the headlines, Wilkerson was provoking the established media and city leadership in support of two opportunities critical to his success: press coverage of dance and greater access to performance venues. The self-generated tension in his pleas missed the intended mark, but it didn’t matter. Tnmot Aztro would become not just the first local dance troop to perform at the contemporary art space, Real Art Ways, they would do so for 3 solid sold-out performances.

Art.

Against the backdrop of the General Electric exodus, union negotiations, and looming austerity budgets, co:lab launched Parkville Studios, a residency program for recent Connecticut art school graduates. Eventually, we will install a 360° mentoring program where the resident cohorts will support high school students interested in an arts education while the residents, themselves, will receive guidance from private collectors, gallery owners, and curators from throughout the Northeast. We’ll do this soon, but not right now.

Right now, we are motivated by a sense of urgency to keep the brightest of our emerging creative talents painting, drawing, and searching for their voice right here in Hartford. Our priority is to offer them the space to generate their indelible contributions to our culture. This priority is as benevolent as it is self-serving because if you care about a community’s ability to heal, or about equity finding its level, or about the pursuit of the elusive “Better World”, then you can do no better service to your own ideals than to double up your investment in creative expression. The timing is irrelevant. Do it because it needs doing—because it changes everything.

Wonder.

That’s what creativity does—it moves us to action. Yet in a down economy, the knee-jerk reaction has been to cut spending on the things that are deemed to be superfluous, limiting expenditures to the “essentials”. Among the first things to go are outreach through marketing and the fostering of the creative part of our culture. That approach is unsustainable. Take another look at the anecdotes above. This is how our community is primed to be reached—through song, through movement, through the paint and textures that represent the essence of who we are right here and right now. When things are tough, we need to stimulate more imagination, not less. We need more lifting up, more hope-giving. We need the new creative people up in front because they conduct the movement. If I were in dire straits, I’d want a New Orleans style marching band like Hartford Hot Several co-opting George Michael songs on the bow. Seriously—we’d levitate.

Invest boldly.

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Rich Hollant is the principal, strategist and a design director at co:lab, a firm he started in 1988.  co:lab helps organizations committed to social value tackle the big questions that lead to greater awareness, purposeful motivation, and deeper loyalty.

PERSPECTIVE commentaries by contributing writers appear each Sunday on Connecticut by the Numbers.

LAST WEEK: The Economic Impact of Not Investing in Social Purpose Leadership

Editorial Cartoon by Bob Englehart

PERSPECTIVE: The Economic Impact of Not Investing in Social Purpose Sector Leadership

by Maggie Gunther Osborn As a leader in transition leaving Connecticut, I wanted to reflect on what is happening with leadership in the social purpose sector in our state and sound a few alarm bells. For those of you unfamiliar with my terminology, I am talking about what we normally refer to as the non-profit sector.  I have chosen to stop saying non-profit, because it has trained us to believe that this is a sector with limited economic impact or does not require the same investments in infrastructure and human capital as other sectors. Non-profit is a tax status but does not describe the work of the social purpose sector.

In Connecticut, the social purpose sector employs between 14-17% of the workforce and generates $33.4 billion in revenues annually. Connecticut foundation giving supporting the sector totals more than $1 billion, but is primarily invested in the programs and outcomes of the sector giving very little attention to investment in leadership.  In fact, nationally less than 1% of all foundation grants support leadership capacity and development. The social purpose sector is a vital, critical part of our state and yet is not often regarded as such in discussions of economic benefit, sustainability, leadership, innovation and job creation.

I sit around the periphery of these discussions and see that much of the energy is focused on the leadership of organizations. We invest in leadership training for our corporate workforces because we understand it is key to the culture, sustainability and productivity of business. I often ask board members who run successful enterprises what they attribute their success to and often they reply “we invest in our people.” And yet very few of them, in their roles as board members, bring that same thought perspective to bear on social purpose decisions.

The result of a lack of investment in the leadership of the social purpose sector is leading to the statistics revealed in Third Sector New England’s Leadership New England Report 2015: Essential Shifts for a Thriving Nonprofit Sector.

• 60% of CT leaders say they will be leaving their organizations within the next five years and 47% of those in the next two years.
• 59% of CT leaders are over 55 compared to 53% in the New England region as a whole.
• More than 54% of organizations have no succession or sustainability plan.
• 61% of CT leader’s salaries are under $100k with 21% under $50k.
• 59% of CT organizations have 3 or fewer month’s cash reserves in comparison to 49% of all New England organizations.
• 29% of CT organizations have no cash reserves compared to just 7.2% of all New England organizations. This indicates that a much larger proportion of CT organizations is at risk of immediately running out of funds than the respective proportion in New England as a whole.

At this point, there are a couple of things to note. First, while we have been talking about leadership transitions for many years, the recession delayed the major transition of leaders out of the sector until now.  Second, there is no bench strength to call on from within these organizations when these leaders retire.  Very little investment has been made to build the skills and capacity of middle managers to step up into leadership roles. Third, most of the departing leaders are Baby Boomers whose leadership roles were dependent on their willingness to work long hours in a professionalized volunteer sector.  We will not fill these rolls with Millennials and Gen Xers for what we paid their predecessors.

Current professionals expect to work in places that are dynamic and culturally competent business environments where they feel comfortable and can advance.  They will not stay a professional lifetime anywhere, and will not stay more than a few years where these characteristics do not exist. In addition, the state budget crisis is going to be our norm for the next decade consequently offloading more responsibility to this sector. We need people with the skills to not only provide services, but also create new business models, attract talent and strategically work through these enormous challenges.

All of us, whether professional, volunteer, elected official, philanthropist, board member or donor, should strive to recruit the best and brightest to the social purpose sector by investing in leadership in the same ways we do in the private sectors. Strong leaders will make the next generation of the social purpose sector resilient enough to meet the challenges that face Connecticut.

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Maggie Gunther Osborn is president of the Connecticut Council for Philanthropy.  She will be leaving the organization in June to assume the post of chief strategy officer for the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers in Washington, DC. 

PERSPECTIVE commentaries by contributing writers appear each Sunday on Connecticut by the Numbers.

LAST WEEK: Reaching Untapped Potential of Urban Students