The Future is Now (Collaboration with students from King’s Centre for Strategic Communications at Kings College London)

By: Paula-Charlotte Matlach, Monika Gill, Quentin Wight

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Foreword

In the summer of 2019, the KCSC-NATO StratCom COE Summer Academy was launched in an innovative venture that brought together the worlds of theory and practice.

An international group of twenty Masters students from the King’s Centre for Strategic Communications at Kings College London joined experts at the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Riga, Latvia. The aim of this project was to expose students pursuing the academic study of Strategic Communications to the everyday concerns of those engaged in policy making, practice, and research in the field.

The timing was important. In June 2019, NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence played host to its Riga StratCom Dialogue which each year brings together nearly a thousand experts and observers from all over the world. The Masters students were to benefit from hearing and interviewing participants while pursuing their own applied research and writing.

The Future is Now offers a collection of reflections by our Masters students on the future of Strategic Communications from a variety of perspectives. Informed by insights from the international community of practitioners, the book proposes thematic ways in which the next few years might unfold. Launching a Summer Academy is perhaps as ambitious a venture as writing confidently about the future. But both projects are long overdue in this rapidly changing world of Strategic Communications and geopolitics where the future appears impatient to invade our present.

Prelude: 'Open your eyes; listen, listen.'

Strategic communications focuses on what to say and how to stand out in a cacophony of voices. Written from the fresh perspective of graduate researchers at the King’s Centre for Strategic Communications (KCSC), this publication is a reminder that the first step in preparing for the future is to listen to what is around us in the present: the underlying hums, beats, and melodies indicating where society is heading.

This is not a work of prediction. Its authors do not foretell the future. Far-reaching consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak on social life, civil liberties, and economies showed the unexpected lurks just around the corner. And yet, the knock-on effects of the pandemic were not wholly unpredictable or even surprising. Existing trends exacerbated issues already identified by scholars, policymakers, and activists: from deficiencies in national healthcare systems, to racial inequalities and prejudices, to disinformation as a shaper of public opinion.

It is such underlying structural, social, and political trajectories that this publication teases out in paired variations on three themes. From how the information environment shapes and is shaped by us (Reflections on Contained Spaces); to challenges to democracy and legitimacy from inside and outside the nation-state (Reflections on Contested Legitimacy); to the role of creativity and co-creation as a destructive and productive force (Reflections on Creative Catalysts). The finale offers a guide to how Futures Studies should be made an integral element of strategic communications.

‘The future reveals itself to us, long before it sets in’[1] said the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. This publication offers a soundtrack to exploring this present-future.

Reflections on Contained Spaces

Variation 1––Shrinking Spaces: How More may be Less in the Information Environment and Variation 2––The Internet Is Fragmented: Where do we go from here? set the scene for the reader. One cannot speak of the future of strategic communications without considering how today’s information and computer technologies (ICTs), especially those enabled by AI, are changing the way humans communicate and process information. Both Variations 1 and 2 identify a pattern of contained and walled spaces. Cognitively, in the limited variety of information and differing opinions with which we engage (Variation 1), but also structurally, in the area of Internet governance (Variation 2). The authors suggest we will see a more fragmented and divided online space. These trends will be noticeable on the individual and societal levels of filter bubbles and echo chambers, as well as at national and transnational levels where states will seek to assert sovereignty and territoriality on the Internet.

Reflections on Contested Legitimacy

The reader is encouraged to consider two recent developments from the perspective of nation state legitimacy and authority. Variation 3 – Comment, Share, Report: Cyber Interference as a Violation of International Law and Variation 4 – At the Climate Protest: Delegitimation of Environmental Governance in Contemporary Liberal Democracies set out two related problems of cyber election interference (external) and social movement organisation (home-grown). Does a vote reflect ‘the will of the people’ when external actors seek to sway public opinion through online communication campaigns? Variation 3 argues that such activities may constitute a breach of international law and the principle of non-intervention. Perhaps it is high time for like-minded nations to align terminology and legislation with the political realities of the 21st century. Simultaneously, the momentum of environmental protests and organisations, such as Extinction Rebellion, enabled by information and computer technologies (ICTs), reveals a waning trust in the ability of institutions to address climate change, and a dissatisfaction with established systems of government. Together, national governments face a future of walking a tightrope between asserting a degree of information sovereignty, without being unduly restrictive to the point of alienating their own populations, and further eroding trust in institutions.

Reflections on Creative Catalysts

Creative freedom and organic coalescence around an issue do not just characterise the recent climate protests. As information and communication technologies develop, so do the sophistication and power of harnessing them creatively. Variation 5 – A Hum that Cannot be Silenced: The Future of Terrorist Communications and Variation 6 – Mirrors and Hammers: Creativity in Strategic Communications draw on this theme. From an aesthetic that trivialises and glorifies violence in online communities of far-right or religious extremists (Variation 5) to becoming familiar with democratic systems through the voting-process in an Afghan talent show (Variation 6), creativity and co-creation are forces to be reckoned with.

Finale

Why all Strategic Communicators should be Futurists is a guide to how Futures Studies should be made an integral element of strategic communications. Most importantly, it emphasises the role of language in how futures are framed. As strategic communicators we aim to shift long-term discourses and influence future action. Put simply: we seek to tell compelling and convincing stories. Whether explicitly articulated or not, we are always already engaged in ‘telling’ what is to come and how it should be understood. The future does not wait for us. The future is now.

Finale: Why all Strategic Communicators should be Futurists (by Samantha Glass)

The future is a contested space where conflicting images held by individuals and groups inspire actions in the present.[253] Strategic communicators are inherently engaged in this competition.

Strategic communications is ‘a holistic approach to communication based on values and interests that encompasses everything an actor does to achieve objectives in a contested environment.’[254] By shaping the discourse of futures, strategic communicators influence people’s perceptions, attitudes, actions, and behaviours. However, speaking credibly about the future and harnessing human agency effectively requires a theoretical foundation in Futures Studies. Given the recent emergence of strategic communications as an independent field, an examination of its relationship and overlap with Futures Studies is nascent in academic literature. Realising the synergy between these two disciplines contributes to a much-needed discussion on suitable tools available to states to avoid undesirable futures, minimise risk or to achieve desired future outcomes in a technologically sophisticated and competitive environment.

John M. Culkin, the contemporary of futurist and media philosopher Marshall McLuhan, stated that ‘we shape our tools and therefore our tools shape us.’[255] This observation provides the starting point of a theory of how strategic communicators can operationalise Futures Studies research to understand the options, limitations, and repercussions of working towards our preferred futures. Futures Studies is the ‘systematic study of possible, probable, and preferable futures, including the worldviews and myths that underlie each future.’[256] Futures research focuses on understanding the origins and consequences of competing, alternative images of the future. It asks why certain people hold specific images of the future as opposed to others, how those images inspire present actions or inactions, and thus how those actions or inactions bring about a desired image of the future.[257] Considering its emphasis on research, analysis and forecasting, Futures Studies gives the impression of functioning solely as an academic field. This Finale challenges this impression by arguing that the fundamental role of strategic communicators in Futures Studies is to enable individuals, groups, and states to articulate, implement, re-envision, and realise their desired futures.

This Finale provides coherence to the terminology and scope of Futures Studies to improve its application to strategic communications. What follows is an analysis of the function and limitations of strategic communications within the three typologies of futures research. Strategic communicators should ideally be applying all three typologies through a procedural process to maximise the effectiveness of their futures discourse. While this chapter address the theoretical framework of Futures Studies, an analysis of the specific methodologies, such as causal layer analysis, scenario planning, visioning and backcasting, is beyond the scope of this chapter.

Why Futures Studies? - Terminology and Scope

Futures Studies is a transdisciplinary, transnational, and multi-sectoral field.[258] There is minimal academic literature that details the history and terminology of the futures field, which has led to frequent reinvention and mislabelling as Futurology, Futurism, or Futuristic. However, futurist Ziauddin Sardar has resolved the field’s identity crisis. His work established that the label of the discipline must be consciously pluralistic and emphasise a diversity of perspectives and methodologies, which is best served by adopting the label ’Futures Studies.’[259] The temporal scope of Futures Studies is from five to fifty years.[260] It is committed to studying fundamentally different alternative futures that use multiple ways of interpreting reality (empirical data, mythology, historical) and considers the perspectives of all types of stakeholders (individuals, corporations, and states).[261]

Three Typologies of Futures Research

For states to speak about the future(s) in a way that is intuitive and credible, strategic communicators need a cogent theoretical framework. Futures Studies is not a clearly defined or bounded discipline with fixed theories. However, futurists tend to bifurcate the research field between the empirical approach to a single future and the pluralist approach to multiple futures.[262] While there are several typologies that fall within these two categories, this section focuses on three dimensions of Futures Studies developed by Sohail Inayatullah, Richard Slaughter, and Jennifer Gidley: the predictive, interpretative, and critical approaches. By examining different assumptions and limitations of the three typologies, this Finale hopes to improve strategic communicators’ understanding of how futures discourse inspires human agency in working towards consciously chosen futures.

1. Predicting an ‘objective future’

In the predictive/empirical tradition, hard science techniques detect trends that predict the future.[263] During the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force and RAND Corporation developed this forecasting approach through extrapolating from mathematical models to anticipate potential national security threats.[264] The assumption underlying prediction is that previously existing circumstances determine the future. In the digital age, improvements in surveying methodologies, modelling, and statistical techniques can reveal lawlike trends from masses of data. From an empiricist perspective, this can be used to quantify complex problems and predict a world based on cumulative and progressive knowledge.

The purpose of strategic communications in the predictive approach is to link theory to data.[265] In this approach, language is considered to be a neutral tool and the future is objectively derived from scientific research. In a contested environment, this approach provides decision-makers with time to plan a set of responses in anticipation of upcoming challenges.[266] Additionally, by asserting that trends are inevitable, this approach can generate second-order effects on empowerment.[267] Depending on whether the trends are positive or negative, strategic communicators must consider how actors operating within and aware of this reinterpretation of reality will react.

However, the future is not observable. Hard sciences have yet to determine a law for social change, caused by rapid technological advancement and diffusion, that permit new behaviours and challenge prior values. Therefore, futurists assert that without future facts and contextual awareness, prediction is impossible.[268] Although the discipline of statistics continues to be serve as a dominant method of structuring our knowledge of the world, it lacks contextual awareness and privileges the worldview or model of thinking of expert authorities in the field.[269] These considerations run counter to the assumption that a quantitative approach is completely objective.

2. Mapping alternative futures

The cultural/interpretative tradition expands the discourse of the future to incorporate non-Western perspectives.[270] Departing from the aim of predicting the singular future, the purpose of the interpretative approach is to understand competing images of the future. A comparative analysis of dissimilar perspectives of the future across various economic, ethnic, gender, or national identities reveals a common understanding of universal human needs and interests.[271] Simply put, by searching for cultural differences, futurists are simultaneously looking for shared stories and narratives. Cultures have different ways of structuring knowledge, implying that there are multiple models for categorising new information to understand the world.[272] What the West perceives as future international challenges is bound by cultural context, and differs from how China sees the future. Yet, by studying how China structures its understanding of reality, the West can re-interpret its own image of the future. Unlike the predictive approach, language in the interpretive tradition does not merely describe reality; rather, it emerges from a historical or cultural context.[273] Terminology is inherently rooted in cultural myths and metaphors, serving as the lens through which we experience and interpret the world.[274]

A range of independent, alternative futures emerges from the interpretative approach. This contributes to a deeper understanding of the perspectives that underpin how different societies conceptualise and articulate possible, probable, and preferable futures. For strategic communicators, understanding the role of identity is critical because the labels given to disciplines and subjects inevitably shape how they are recognised and spread. The interpretative approach enables a reinterpretation of myths and cultural narratives to alter how people understand their reality and perceive their futures, which may stimulate attitudinal or behavioural changes in the present. This also implies that strategic communications can facilitate the marginalisation of different cultures’ competing worldviews. By favouring western perspectives and visions of the future, strategic communications can potentially foreclose the future for non-western cultures, enabling a non-physical form of colonisation.[275] The interpretative approach can be exploited to assert the superiority of Western images of the future.[276]

3. Shaping Desired Futures in the Present

The post-structural/critical tradition developed to counterbalance an overreliance on empiricism.[277] Rather than focus on forecasting and comparison, the objective of the critical approach is to question the status quo of how societies define, discuss, and categorise the present.[278] This is achieved by problematising current assumptions and social constructions of reality that shape how we discuss the future. Unlike the interpretative tradition, in which language is symbolic and tied to cultural myths, the critical tradition asserts that language directly constructs reality.[279] Therefore, a state’s discourse and its authoritative use of language is fundamental to understanding how certain futures and worldviews become dominant.[280] The critical tradition asserts that the present is the ‘victory of one discourse, or way of thinking, overpowering another.’[281] This underscores the central role of competition in strategic communications. Therefore, the task of strategic communicators is to renegotiate the historical power structures that define people’s current worldviews. This involves questioning and destabilising the assumptions of categories and labels used when discussing futures and asking why these models have become the sole way of describing reality.[282] The examination of what historical categories have become hegemonic simultaneously shows which categories and alternative futures have been suppressed.

The three approaches are not mutually exclusive, and while the most relevant approach depends on the strategic communicator’s operational context, ideally all three should be used in one communications strategy.[283] Futurists contextualise empirical data (predictive) within the culture from which the data originated (the interpretative) and then historically dissect the different knowledge structures, power relationships, and assumptions that enabled the domination of one futures discourse or scenario over another (critical).[284] This process reveals which alternative futures were silenced and who benefited/suffered from the materialisation of a certain worldview. This tripartite research process enables the identification of cultures that have historically been or will be silenced based on historical trends. Therefore, the ultimate role of strategic communicators is to construct stories or reinterpret myths and metaphors that create emotive support to help others articulate and potentially realise alternative futures. This Finale has shown that Futures Studies has progressed beyond forecasting a singular future, to analysing alternative futures, to shaping desired futures.[285]