Post Normal Times

One of the hallmarks of a democratic society is a healthy, free-flowing media ecosystem. In the past, that media ecosystem included various mass media outlets, from newspapers to cable networks. Today, the Internet and social media platforms have dramatically expanded the reach of communication within society. Of course, journalism plays a key role within that ecosystem. Quality journalism and social media transparency keep power structures in check, and sometimes these forces can drive real social change. That said, these impacts are obscured by harmful practices and negative externalities within the ecosystem with real consequences for news consumers. Whether explicit or implicit bias, disinformation or misinformation, lack of context or cherry-picking of data, propaganda masquerading as sensationalism or high-quality content behind paywalls, journalism needs reform from within. At the same time, the world is facing a myriad of dying orthodoxies: modernity; postmodernity; neoliberalism; hierarchical structures of society, institutions and organisations; top-down politics; everything that has shaped and defined the world of today. As new orthodoxies struggle to emerge, we are being swept up in a trend of change that we cannot keep up with: the speed with which the new overtakes the obsolete is astonishing. The world is not only moving faster, but it is also becoming a smaller place: events or crises have a global and international impact on people's lives, and tend to occur all at once ("it never rains but it pours"). Economic analyses are ever-more linked to environmental considerations, both are heavily influenced by political dynamics, which are interconnected to cultural developments. Post Normal Times tries to place itself within this evolving global context and journalistic environment with a "slow journalism" approach on three interconnected themes: global warming and the energy transition, geopolitics and international relations, and social changes.