Abstract
Communication discipline, including communication courses in higher education, must aptly respond to the demands emerging due to the rapid developments in the AI technologies and globally widespread application of generative AI. Furthermore, to truly stay relevant, communication education must speak to the pervasive, complicated, and difficult-to-solve mega-crises that are diminishing human security, while growing more severe in the current era, around the world. This chapter explores the approaches within communication higher education that can contribute to mitigation of mega-crises via meaningful and ethical integration of AI-supported solutions. Specifically, communication education should emphasize (1) global alliances, (2) cross-disciplinary alliances, (3) community-inclusive alliances, (4) creativity, adaptability, and acceptance of uncertainty, and (5) establishment of viable infrastructures and platforms that enable global, cross-disciplinary, and community-inclusive deliberation and decision-making.
TopThe Era Of Mega-Crises And The Era Of Ai
Dignity, health, and the overall quality of life of many people and entire communities worldwide are severely diminished by pervasive trends such as poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, violence, armed conflict, corruption, discrimination, extremism, illness, hunger, environmental degradation, pollution, etc. Mega-crisis is a concept that highlights the entanglement of these negative pervasive trends. They are each an individual serious crisis in its own right. But also, each of these crises is frequently entwined with one another, and exacerbates one another, and that makes it particularly difficult to solve any one of them, which precisely is what defines the concept of a mega-crisis (Alpaslan & Mitroff, 2011).
Mega-crises result from a cluster of systemic failures that feed a sort of wicked problem (Alpaslan & Mitroff, 2011; Parrott, 2020). Hence, the potential solutions are so elusive. Even if one of the systemic failures is addressed, the others continue to feed the pervasive wicked problem. Hence, any plausible solutions or mitigations must be very comprehensive and complex (Lukacovic & Sellnow-Richmond, 2023). Such changes at a systemic scale are rather difficult to achieve. While reforms that can mitigate mega-crises are only slowly implemented, mega-crises constantly grow, frequently fueled by other fast changes of this era with the globalization of the economy, media, and other aspects of the modern world.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Human Security: A people-centered perspective on security that emphasizes individuals’ and communities’ right to safety, health, education, dignity, and overall wellbeing.
Community-Inclusive Alliances: Collaborations in the sectors of education, research, and applied practice that involve participation and perspectives of individuals, groups, or organizations that represent various local and/or global communities.
Global Alliances: Collaborations in the sectors of education, research, and applied practice that involve participation and perspectives of individuals, groups, or organizations that represent different countries, cultures, philosophies, and/or experiences around the world.
Cross-Disciplinary Alliances: Collaborations in the sectors of education, research, and applied practice that involve participation and perspectives of individuals, groups, or organizations that represent various academic disciplines.
Global Era of AI: The stage of social development in which AI technologies become prevalent and/or highly impactful across various sectors around the world.
Mega-Crisis: A complex, serious set of interconnected and pervasive challenges, which are difficult to solve individually and tend to exacerbate one another, leading to significant threats to human security and general wellbeing.
Generative AI: Technological tools that are capable of creating novel texts, codes, images, sounds, videos, or other types of content, which are based on machine learning systems such as neural networks and large sets of training data.
Communication Education: Teaching and learning of theoretical concepts, ethical considerations, and practical skills across the broader discipline of Communication (with capital C) that includes (but is not limited to) media, journalism, public relations, interpersonal communication, organizational communication, speech communication, rhetoric, etc.