• by Joe Mandese , Yesterday

It has been a couple of years since I updated my analysis correlating the decline of people living in a democracy with the rise of internet penetration, but based on recently published new data from Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) it is now the minority of people living on our planet: 48.6%, down from 50.9% two years ago.

The biggest drop over that period is among people living in a liberal democracy (down 2.9 points to 17.3% of the world's population) vs. a simple electoral democracy (down 0.9 point to 31.3%).

In its update, V-Dem characterized the decline within the United States as "unprecedented," noting that America has fallen from the 20th to 51st place among 179 nations in its Liberal Democracy Index in the past year alone.

During the same one-year and two-year periods, internet penetration has also increased, but it's not just about internet access -- it's also about how the internet is being used to weaponize disinformation and undermine democracies, which ultimately depend on an informed public.

In fact, I would argue that we've evolved from a "post-truth" era of information to more of a "post-reality" one, thanks to the increasing role AI is playing in distorting not just facts, but synthesizing what otherwise might be experienced as authentic realities. And it's accelerating fast.

I'm not sure what an advertising trade publication like MediaPost can actually do about that -- aside from its editor-in-chief periodically grousing about it in columns like this -- but I've been inspired by some announcements in recent weeks about new ad industry award programs created to recognize ad industry efforts to help sustain and promote democracy.

Both the London International Awards (LIA) and the Effie Awards Europe have launched new awards programs promoting advertising creative and advertising effectiveness, respectively, in recent weeks.

Remarkably, the Cannes Lions -- or as far as I can tell, no U.S.-based ad industry awards program -- has followed suit.

And since both nature and democracy abhor vacuums, I'm using today's post to kick off a new MediaPost editorial award -- the first ever under the banner of Marketing Politics and "Red, White & Blog" -- recognizing the best effort by a campaign, organization or individual -- to strengthen democracy.

Like all of our editorial awards, the criteria for this one is explicitly open-ended beyond the guidance that we're looking for things that demonstrate vision, innovation and industry leadership using advertising and media to strengthen democracy.

If anyone has any ideas for beefing that up, or even what the awards should actually be called, please send them to joe@mediapost.com.

Entry will be free and the deadline is December 31, 2026. We'll announce the winner shortly after New Year -- possibly during MediaPost's annual Marketing Politics Conference in Washington, D.C. in January.

I'll publish more as we get closer to the deadline, but would appreciate any feedback.