Public Conversation

Public conversation is a slow-moving beast. By this I mean a narrative - any narrative - on a given topic that is being carried out by the general public. An example of this would be talk about the dangers of legalizing pot. For many years, the conventional wisdom was that a shift in moving it from being illegal to legal would be a seismic mistake. Such a perspective represented  the primary direction of any public conversation on this topic. It literally took years before the opposite perspective gained any kind of meaningful traction in the public arena. Presently, on this topic the public conversation is different from what it was.

How did this happen? What contributed to such a change? I raise these questions not so much about public attitudes regarding legalizing pot. Rather, my questions speak more to the shift itself. What were the communication dynamics that occured to help make the shift possible? What role did communication play in this change? Specifically, how big of a part did and do professional communicators play in all this? Without question, even the chance of a shift in public conversation does not exist without the involvement of pros who devise specific strategies designed to trigger eventual change.

These strategies can and do include identifying targeted audiences, credible advocates, viable communication channels, and adequate budgets. They also include another ingredient that is of utmost importance: patience. Shifts in public conversation often take time. Rarely do they occur over night. Consequently, professionals with the ability to devise long range plans are key players in all this. As a result, when a change in public conversation does occur, it often seems like it happen over night. The reality, however, is often quite different. Dramatic change only seems dramatic because it is only the end of the evolution that is visible to the public eye.