The French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard predicted it more than 45 years ago: Referring to among other things, the Age of Enlightenment and ideological civil movements such as Marxism, he put forward the argument that the end of the exhausted metanarratives of modernity would be followed by an age of micronarratives. Meaningful narratives of limited scope that do not assert a claim to universal validity, but legitimize a clearly defined goal and focus energies on it. At the core of these narratives is not so much a fact-based reality with a comprehensible level of truth, but rather a wishful state of mind molded from value preferences and a tendency towards emotional appeal. And this is precisely the reason why periods of transition and change are always also periods when narratives flourish.
Communications professionals working in the fields of business and politics also drive this process and are fully aware of its effectiveness.. For example those who use the terms disruption, transformation or turning point are preparing their audience for fundamental changes so as to make them take notice and to win them over. While the impact of this impetus can be surprisingly different for different target groups, it is always the link to reality that determines its success. Narrative communication should not replace – or obscure, which is equally problematic – issues of substance, which is why it gives pause for thought when there are increasingly frequent and ever louder calls in the public discourse for other narratives to convey controversial positions more effectively.
More “success stories” should be told, the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs recently proclaimed to an OMR audience in a manner befitting his target group, and in the run-up to the EU parliamentary elections, the editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Gerald Braunberger, said tellingly that “Europe does not need narratives or symbolic politics, but action that people view as useful”.
This challenge has been strikingly reflected in the perception and positioning of communications management within German companies, as recently documented in a study conducted by the University of Leipzig with the support of the Academic Society for Corporate Management & Communication. Only around half of the senior executives and barely more than a third of the mid-level executives surveyed believe corporate communications helps them to fulfil these tasks. While 87 percent of senior executives are satisfied with their communications departments, the figure for employees is only 51 percent. The majority of all respondents want communications departments to do a better job of explaining what they do and how they create value. So does this mean that we also need a new narrative for communications management – especially when the use of AI is on the rise?
The answer to this can be found in another aspect of the findings from the Leipzig study: When asked “whether the work of the communications department makes it easier to achieve your own goals”, only 50 percent of senior executives, 36 percent of mid-level executives and 30 percent of employees responded with “yes”. While there is no doubt that communications management could do a better job of explaining what it does, what it needs to demonstrate most of all is a realistic approach and reliable problem-solving expertise. The current discourse around the mechanization of communications work does not help in this regard – as summarized by AI expert Katharina Zweig: “AI is unable to justify how it arrives at a decision.” In other words, it lacks a sense of reality.
In 1978, in a text with the remarkable title “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later”, the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick answers the question What is reality? “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Narratives are the opposite of this and communications professionals should approach them with caution when they go about building universes: both within and for their own profession.
