Communication Complexity

3. Factors That Make Conflict Intractable

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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People act on the basis of what they believe is happening around them. But what they believe depends heavily on communication: what they hear from family and friends, what they see in their communities, what they read in newspapers and books, what they encounter on television and radio, and what appears in email, search results, podcasts, social media feeds, and video platforms. Communication complexity arises because information does not move through society in a simple, neutral way. It is selected, framed, repeated, distorted, interpreted, challenged, and amplified by many different people and institutions.

Even "simple" face-to-face communication is complex because tone, body language, status, trust, emotion, culture, and prior relationships all affect what people hear. A comment intended as a joke may be heard as an insult. A sincere apology may sound manipulative. A warning may be heard as a threat. Mass communication adds another layer of complexity because most people learn about distant events through intermediaries: journalists, editors, experts, influencers, political leaders, algorithms, and advocacy organizations. Pew Research Center's work on social media and news shows how deeply news consumption is now intertwined with digital platforms.

Modern communication systems can help people understand one another, but they can also intensify conflict. Social media makes it possible for marginalized voices to be heard, for wrongdoing to be exposed, and for rapid mobilization to occur. But it also rewards outrage, speed, emotional intensity, and group reinforcement. Misinformation, rumors, propaganda, misleading images, and selective clips can spread with astonishing speed, especially when they confirm what people already fear or believe. Pew's tracking of misinformation and media society shows how central these concerns have become to public and even private life.

Communication complexity means that constructive conflict work cannot simply ask whether a message is true. It also has to ask who is sending the message, who is receiving it, what channel carries it, what incentives shape it, how it is framed, and how different audiences are likely to interpret it. Good communication in conflict settings requires active listening, translation across worldviews, careful framing, correction of falsehoods, and attention to trust. In deeply divided societies, communication systems can either help people understand the conflict more accurately or trap them in mutually hostile information worlds.

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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.