Systems Communications: A systems-oriented approach to strategic communication
Bibliographic record
Abstract
After nearly a decade of field-building, systemic design has emerged with a robust theoretical foundation, as well as practical tools, methods, and cases, to help designers better work with complexity in higher-order systems. \n \nThis focus on establishing foundational works for the young field leaves some areas of the integration between systems thinking and design underdeveloped; namely, communication design. \n \nCommunication design, as explored within a systemic design context, has traditionally been concerned with visual thinking, which itself is a common characteristic of both systems thinking and design. The result of this concentrated effort on visual thinking has led to advancements in communication artefacts, such as the flagship gigamaps and synthesis maps. \n \nAt RSD8, the discussion titled Conversations on Systemic Design generated much dialogue around the need to better translate the value of systemic design for a variety of audiences. \n \nIt’s here where the opportunity to develop a stronger ‘strategic’ foundation for communication design, with a systems orientation, is presented as a critical next step towards strengthening the field and breadth of systemic design. \n \nThis discussion explores how the principles of systemic design (Jones, 2014) inform an evolved practise of strategic communications – the planned process of delivering a relevant message to a specific audience to achieve an objective – to reach a broader set of stakeholders. \n \nThe discussion will be based on the author’s recently completed Major Research Project which took a systems-oriented communication approach to Canadian News Media, a higher-order system. \n \nThe issues facing Canadian News Media are complex in nature; with multiple stakeholders, different organisations and industries, competing value systems, objectives, perspectives, and interests. This makes it an ideal case to examine the effects that a more systems-oriented approach to communications may have towards inviting action in a contested system. \n \nThe author will offer a set of learnings, based on how the principles of systemic design could inform a systems-oriented approach to communications. Following this, the discussion will surface the potential value of systems-oriented communications, its consequences, and future considerations and possibilities for research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.029 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.016 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".