About
MY INDIANA GOV
About Us
My Indiana Gov
More Than Journalism
Much of the ‘news’ today is “junk food journalism”. Just like our diets, many prefer easy food; made for us, fast, convenient and requiring as little effort and personal investment as possible.
This predominant style of journalism has primarily become short summaries meant to influence the thinking of its audience rather than to just present information. In fact, many media narratives are carefully coordinated and alarmingly consistent. Yet, this cheap chain store uniformity makes up the bulk of what sets the minds of the majority of citizens.
This has lead to not just low information voters, but high misinformation voters. Worse yet, this leads to politicians who can, and are, using the media to manipulate perceptions.
One of the primary goals of this MyIndianaGov.com will be to experiment with presenting information in a new way so that more people will re-engage with their government and be less influenced by junk food journalism.
To be transparent, ‘us’ is currently a team of 1. That one has a more than full time job and will be severely time constrained to grow this concept on personal time. In the end, we must be content whatever the circumstances. If all this site accomplishes is to raise awareness on a few topics, influence some legislation and some voters, then I am thankful for it.
Initial Focus
State-level policies and elected officials for Indiana
Critical Bills, Key Republican Legislators, Governor, and others…
- Identify critical Bills, policies or topics and present a structured analysis
- Evaluate the engagement of key elected officials
- Identify & implement new approaches to bring additional context for accountability
Desired Outcomes
Our system of self-government works when citizens are appropriately engaged.
What would significantly improve our engagement?
- Less reliance and trust in biased summaries from coordinated narratives
- Better availability of structured information
- Bring the average citizen closer to the source