A friend texts you a clip about a big news story. It might be from a network reporter. It might just as easily be from a creator like Aaron Parnas. Either way, that clip may be the first time someone understands the issue - long before they read an article, visit a website, or hear from an expert.

That's the challenge the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace explores in its new report, How to Engage with New Media: A Strategic Guide for Nonprofit Organizations. On October 1, Social Driver’s Chief Influencer hosted two of the report's authors, Rachel Kleinfeld and Renée DiResta, along with Carnegie Endowment for International Peace senior fellow Sarah Labowitz, for a virtual briefing on what their findings mean in practice. The briefing brought the report's findings to nonprofit, association, foundation, and public affairs leaders.

The report's core finding is blunt: "Those media channels and skills still matter—but they are no longer sufficient." Press releases, newsletters, and institutional accounts remain part of the job. They just can't carry the whole load anymore, because audiences now encounter information through creators, podcasts, newsletters, messaging apps, and algorithmically curated feeds that may never lead them to an organization's website. This is a leadership decision, too: goals, staffing, partnerships, and risk tolerance need agreement beyond the communications team.

Three ideas from the report offer a practical starting point for your team:

1. Map the media diet, not the demographics. The report urges communicators to look beyond age, location, and party to what people actually consume. One example from the report makes the point: a demographic profile of a 45-year-old woman in Texas tells you less than knowing she listened to 16 hours of one commentator last month. One gives you a category. The other gives you a worldview.
2. Trust lives with people, not logos. Recognizable individual voices can help organizations reach people who might scroll past an institutional account. The report's most memorable case study comes from Sarah Labowitz, whose work pairing Carnegie Endowment for International Peace research with storm chaser Edgar O'Neal illustrates how a trusted messenger can bring disaster research to a new audience. The practical question for any organization: who already has the audience's trust, and what would it take to work with them? Build reciprocal relationships across creators and communities so ideas can travel beyond a single post.
3. Speed needs pre-approved guardrails. New media moves in hours while institutional review moves in days. Agree on risk boundaries and escalation rules in advance so communicators can move quickly while protecting accuracy and trust.

The report also retires a familiar crutch: view counts and follower numbers are not enough to prove impact. Match measures to the goal: track sign-ups or donations for mobilization, repeat participation for community building, and engagement from new audiences for persuasion. Comments expressing disagreement can signal broader reach; they do not prove that minds have changed.

For small teams wondering where to start, here's a practical next step: pick one experiment to run in the next 30 days. Choose an audience, a messenger, and one useful outcome to measure. Then use what you learn to decide what to try next.

These takeaways are part of a broader conversation about how nonprofits build trust and influence in a changing media landscape. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report explores that shift in depth. Watch the recording below for the full conversation with Rachel Kleinfeld, Renée DiResta, and Sarah Labowitz.

Thank you to Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and to everyone who spent their lunch hour with us. 

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