Communication Thinkers

7. Massively Parallel Roles & Tasks

This introductory article was written by ChatGPT at the direction of Heidi Burgess, who reviewed, edited, and approved the final content.
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July 15, 2026

Communication thinkers look for ways to improve the flow of information on which democratic decision making depends. Citizens cannot make wise collective choices when important facts are hidden, falsehoods spread more rapidly than corrections, or people encounter only arguments that reinforce what they already believe. Communication problems also arise when technically accurate information is presented without the context needed to understand it. Communication thinkers study these failures and develop ways to make public discourse more accurate, balanced, comprehensible, and constructive. Their work includes improving journalism, strengthening media literacy, explaining how persuasion works, and redesigning the institutions and technologies through which information travels.

Some communication thinkers help people recognize the perspectives and limitations of different news sources. Ad Fontes Media rates news content along separate dimensions of political bias and reliability. Its methodology uses trained analysts from different political perspectives to evaluate individual articles and programs before combining those assessments into source-level ratings. AllSides also rates media bias, using methods that include multipartisan editorial reviews and blind surveys. It then presents coverage from the left, center, and right so readers can compare how different outlets frame the same issue. These systems cannot determine which interpretation is correct, and their ratings should not replace reading critically. They can, however, make hidden patterns of selection, emphasis, and framing more visible.

Other communication thinkers are trying to broaden what journalism treats as newsworthy. Conventional reporting often concentrates on breakdowns, scandals, and disasters. Such reporting performs an essential watchdog function, but a steady diet of failure can leave audiences believing that problems are insoluble and civic action is pointless. The Solutions Journalism Network promotes rigorous reporting on how people are responding to social problems and what can be learned from their successes, limitations, and failures. Solutions journalism is not advocacy or cheerful reporting. It subjects proposed responses to evidence-based scrutiny. By reporting both the problem and serious efforts to address it, journalists can give citizens a more complete picture of reality and provide useful knowledge about what might work elsewhere.

Communication thinkers also study what it takes to change minds. In The Persuaders, Anand Giridharadas examines organizers and advocates who reject the assumption that political opponents are unreachable. Their work suggests that persuasion usually requires more than presenting facts or denouncing error. It involves listening for the fears and experiences beneath a person’s stated position, treating people as capable of change, and describing a positive future rather than communicating only what one opposes. Statistical literacy is equally important. In Bad Data, Georgina Sturge explains that numbers can mislead even when no one is deliberately lying. Data may be incomplete, based on inconsistent definitions, or gathered through methods poorly suited to the claim being made. Citizens therefore need to ask what was measured, how it was measured, what was omitted, and how much uncertainty surrounds the result.

At the broadest level, communication thinkers examine the global information environment as a system. The International Panel on the Information Environment, or IPIE, brings researchers together to assess threats such as misinformation, algorithmic bias, and manipulative uses of artificial intelligence. It also evaluates proposed responses, including media-literacy programs, fact-checking, platform design changes, and public policies. This work is difficult because efforts to improve information quality can threaten privacy, free expression, or legitimate political disagreement if they are poorly designed. Communication thinkers therefore must do more than identify bad information. They must help societies promote accurate and trustworthy communication without creating authorities that can simply suppress disfavored views. Their larger goal is an information environment in which citizens can encounter competing perspectives, evaluate evidence, and deliberate together without being overwhelmed by distortion and manipulation.

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This page was created by ChatGPT in response to this prompt. It was then reviewed, edited, supplemented and approved by Heidi Burgess. More information about how and why we are using AI in this way, and about the growing number of ways in which Beyond Intractability is using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI systems to generate content and build out the BI system, is available on our BI/AI Overview Page.