Meaning-Making in Today’s Information Environment
We live in an era where algorithms decide what gets seen, shared, and often what gets believed. Public communications, once shaped by journalists, trusted institutions, reliable context, room for nuance and the voice of an audience we at least thought we understood, is increasingly mediated by platforms optimised for attention rather than making sense.
What does this mean for the people whose job it is to communicate clearly, build trust, and create the conditions for and audience they care about to make meaning? To move people from awareness, through understanding, and maybe to action?
In this Season 2 conversation, Vishal George sits down with Sam Prescott, communications futurist and writer of Slow Comms, to explore how modern communication systems are being reshaped by algorithmic forces, massive changes in technology, society and culture, and what we can all do to ensure that we don’t get lost - and that what’s special about us doesn’t get lost either.
First Half Interview — Deep into the Communications System
Using the iceberg model from systems thinking, our conversation will walk you beneath the surface of public communications to explore the deeper structures shaping us in the age of algorithms.
✔️ Events and Patterns — The visible signs that communication systems are under pressure: declining trust, fragmented publics, and the rise of competing narratives.
✔️ Underlying Structures and System — How factors like always-on connectivity, algorithmic amplification, and the commodification of attention have reduced thoughtful, deliberate and active information seeking and assimilation, to a modern “ambient hybrid”
✔️ Mental Models and Leverage Points — Why the human yearning for nostalgia and collective sense-making matters more than ever. How people can consciously design their own active communication systems to serve a more genuine shared understanding.
Second Half Participation — Live Audience Q&A
Bring your questions and reflections. The second half of this live interview is an open conversation about collectively making-meaning in the digital age.
About Sam Prescott
Sam Prescott is a communications futurist, consultant, cultural analyst and strategist based in Wellington. He is Co-Director of Sixteenth Letter Ltd, a full-service communications consultancy, and the writer of Slow Comms on Substack, which explores how modern professional communication systems are under threat in a rapidly changing and degrading information environment.
About the Interview Series
People Who Think in SYSTEMS is a live interview series hosted by Vishal George, Founding Member of the School of Systems Thinking NZ. Each conversation shares stories from change-makers who are tackling some of the most complex challenges of our time.
The first interview of Season 2 raises the stakes, uncovering the hidden forces shaping public communications in the age of technology.
👉🏾 Watch Season 1 here: https://schoolofsystemsthinking.co.nz