TITLE:
The Nature of Change Has Changed. Insightful and Timely Understanding of What People Feel, and Think Is More Important than Ever
AUTHORS:
Chris D. Beaumont, Darrell Berry, John Ricketts
KEYWORDS:
Narratives, Engagement, Big Data, AI, Improved Decisions
JOURNAL NAME:
iBusiness,
Vol.15 No.1,
January
31,
2023
ABSTRACT: Technology is transforming industry after industry, perhaps none so much
as the media landscape which has, since the
millennium, seen traditional and hierarchical,
mass media upended by flatter, networks, interconnectivity across the globe, spurning social media, and narratives
that have now become the mainstay of
people’s lives. Tracking such narratives enables one to understand what people themselves feel is important to them.
This has never been more important
than at the present time. The daily lives of everyone were rapidly transformed by the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19, which for 2 years saw many
different approaches by different country leaders. In general, it demonstrated that systems were broken and leadership
lacking when most needed. Volatility,
uncertainty, and indeed fear were compounded by miscommunications and a lack of
clarity. The pandemic, coupled with the unwarranted invasion of Ukraine, has further adversely affected
peoples’ outlook with rapidly changing
priorities by (new) leaders, who are now seeing further societal turmoil in
people’s daily lives as mental health, basic living costs…, add to the already heightened uncertainty. Leaders must accept and embrace that not only is the
rate of change accelerating, but the nature of change itself is changing and having a transformational effect on people and
institutions. This paper shares the results of tracking key lifestyle
narratives, in A Virtual Living Lab, from
before COVID-19 to September 2022, when most countries had removed their pandemic restrictions. It shows how
investigating “important” narratives, those
with utility, can enable people to track and respond to what people think is important by “engaging with engagement” that already exists in current social media environments that
describe what people think/feel and can lead to behaviour change. Paradoxically, with media fragmentation, there are many like-minded, micro-communities that have deeper engagement and thus, the
potential to create competence with the apparent complexity of modern living.