Anyone who tried to make predictions a year ago about 2020 likely missed the mark — by a lot. A global pandemic and its impact on virtually everything was a game changer few could have foreseen, including those of us who regularly track the zeitgeist. We can only hope that 2021 brings us back to a more predictable — and better — place.
Many of the buzzwords below reflect that hope. This list is an attempt to go beyond words we hear practically every day. (If that were the measure, the Zoom cry — “You’re on mute” — would be the hands-down winner.) Still, we will likely come across all of these in the news at conferences and around meeting tables in 2021. And with any luck, including the successful and equitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, those gatherings won’t all be virtual.
Caremongering
A Canadian term for abundant acts of kindness. It captures the best of human nature when faced with crises and has been on display around the world during the pandemic.
Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior
This term of art, credited to Facebook, describes efforts to organize actions to create mischief or cause harm. A well-known example in 2020 occurred when thousands of TikTok users made reservations for a Trump campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., with the intention of claiming seats, inflating campaign expectations, and then not showing up. Companies are spending money to monitor this phenomenon, even as many struggle to define it, which means civil society should pay attention.
Cloud
This is not a new term, but it is one that every nonprofit and philanthropic organization should be thinking about as major software providers move to host their services in the cloud only. That means no more desktop versions of word-processing or spreadsheet tools. Since the “cloud” is just marketing speak for “tech-company servers,” be prepared for every piece of data about your organization to end up in a file folder on a distant big-tech server.
Digital Assembly
Collective action depends on being able to assemble in a multitude of ways. We gather online. We gather offline. And we gather in the spaces left behind by our digital data trails. Digital assembly includes how we exercise our ability to gather in all three places: in strictly online gatherings manipulated by corporate algorithms; in offline places where we are tracked by surveillance tools embedded in everything from building security systems to spot counters in parking garages, and in the liminal spaces between the two, which we navigate via our digital data trails. The philanthropic world needs to better understand how technology is encroaching on our right to assemble — and support efforts to prevent it.
Digital Infrastructure
This term defines the hardware, software, corporations, networks, regulations, and institutions that constitute our digital systems. It includes everything from the cables over which digital information is transmitted to the apps on our phones. These systems are built by people working in companies and nonprofits. Some are dependent on physical materials, such as routers and data centers, and all are shaped by laws, regulations, and group practices imposed by internet governance bodies and standards organizations. An expansive definition of digital infrastructure recognizes all of these features and the ways they interact with physical, digital, and social systems. More than ever, the nonprofit world needs a digital infrastructure that isn’t completely commercialized or vulnerable to surveillance.
Disparate Impact
The term comes from labor law and applies to public policies in areas such as housing or employment that adversely affect one group of people over another. It is especially relevant today due to federal efforts to limit its use in discrimination cases, the growing awareness of how algorithmic decision-making technologies exacerbate the problem, and intensifying attention to systemic inequities in our policies, laws, and government institutions.
Keyword Squatting
The Harvard Media Manipulation Casebook defines this as the “tactic of creating online content — including social-media accounts — around a specific search-engine-optimized term so as to determine the search results of that term.” Think of it as a version of identity theft but on an organizational scale. In practice, it might include swarming a hashtag to make it mean something other than what its originators intended. An example from 2020: Queer activists jumping in and using the hashtag #ProudBoys on social media, thus diminishing and ridiculing the tag’s intended signal among followers of a white-supremacist group. Anyone can squat or be squatted, so everyone on social media needs to be alert to the likelihood of being manipulated in this way.
OrgSec
This term is shorthand for organizational security, an increasingly important issue for nonprofits and foundations. It includes securing digital systems, training staff and volunteers about phishing and data breaches, and identifying potential risks to the organization and the people who work there. All too often, that means protecting the physical safety of advocates and even direct service providers, especially Black employees, other staff of color, and women, who are increasingly harassed and harmed.
Reset
This refers to starting again as circumstances change. Throughout 2021, we’ll hear promises of resetting just about everything.
Big-Idea Buzzwords
Buzzwords typically mix catchy lingo with significant ideas. But some ideas are too big to be characterized merely as buzzwords, even if they come with their own convenient jargon. That is the case with the concepts below. Each requires constant attention because it questions both easily spotted, visible practices and deeply embedded, almost instinctive, assumptions.
Knowledge Frameworks
Epistemology is the fancy word for a theory of knowledge. Different theories emphasize different values. Some, for example, focus on financial relations while others prioritize social relationships. In the United States, we value whiteness, patriarchy, convenience, and capitalism to the extent that these values seem “normal” and unquestionable. Given global demographics and the entwined challenges of inequity, climate change, and the coronavirus, it behooves us to consider the limitations of our knowledge frameworks. Failing to do so makes it harder to work together across differences and is a barrier to meaningful change — as well as being misleading, harmful, and discriminatory. Efforts such as the Equitable Evaluation Initiative are helping to make equity a fundamental value in foundation and nonprofit work.
Decolonizing Technology
Most technology today is developed according to a set of assumptions that largely serve those who build and sell it. While some attention is paid to civil rights, the full spectrum of human agency, dignity, and economic or social rights is barely considered in technology design. Decolonizing technology is the call to create cultural and social structures that use technology for human good rather than amplifying problems such as racism and sexism. It builds on broader efforts to decolonize a society built on white privilege and power.
Global Majority
The majority of humans on the planet are racially, ethnically, culturally, linguistically, geographically, religiously, and socially diverse. White, European-descended Christians are a minority. This phrase, which comes from the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences, works better than “people of color,” “nonwhite” and many others that continue to position white, European-descended people as the norm and everyone else as others.
