Context Moulding and the Production of Uncertainty : Exploring Future Signals in Geopolitical (Dis)Information Spaces

Abstract

<p> In recent years, several structures of democratic societies have been under growing pressure. This is due to many reasons, including the spread of populism in democratic Western countries and technological development, such as artificial intelligence. In this article, we focus on the systematic, and partially deliberate, production of uncertainty and unsteadiness in European countries by hostile state and other actors. We argue that the production of uncertainty has two aspects. The first aspect is the intentional and manipulative process catalysed by various state and other actors. The second aspect is a messier systemic process that is emerging as complex political and citizen-level reactions to the perceived crises of Western democracies and liberal market economies. These two aspects have resulted in new geopolitical contexts and novel spaces of information and disinformation that are the primary sites for the production of uncertainty, especially through so-called weak signals. In this article, we construct a context moulding framework for scrutinising these spaces. We demonstrate the framework with a selection of signals and development trajectories. For this purpose, we utilise a relational futures theory and a related weak signals framework. <br></p>