Futurism and Trend Analysis

Futurism in public relations refers to attempts to project trends through analysis of current or historical data for the purpose of strategic communication planning. Futures research focuses on developing methodologies for identifying and analyzing future trends for long-range forecasting and planning. While calls for practitioners to look toward the future began in the mid-20th century, as a response to the perceived narrow focus of public relations practice on past experience and immediate circumstances, interest in futurism grew dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s, fueled by technological advances in communication and information systems. In recent years, the push to incorporate trend analysis into public relations has paralleled the growth of the Internet and social media and the accompanying unprecedented access to social data.

As a movement, futurism in the social sciences became prevalent beginning in the late 1960s, spearheaded by futurologists such as Olaf Helmer (a researcher at the Rand Corporation), and continued into the 1970s through the writings of futurist scholars Joseph Martino, Victor Ferkiss, and others. Given its roots in computer science, the early field reflected a mid-20th-century fascination with the potential to use computer database technology and burgeoning communication systems as aids for decision making and prediction, a push to apply the same scientific principles to social contexts as the natural world. The conviction that science and technology held the keys to the future was a recurring theme in the age of space exploration and early computer technology.

Futurism has been associated with the growing connection between public relations and public policy. As the field moved into the 1980s, futurist authors emphasized the potential for public relations practitioners to use their skills and positions within organizations to influence policy decisions. Futurism was seen as a means of using forecasting methods to identify long-term trends in policy-making environments and determine appropriate interventions. Futurism thus became closely linked to issues management, although it is important to note that these are distinct practices. Futures research can support issues management, but not replace it.

Arguments made in support of a futurist orientation in public relations have included improved ethics, more accurate and effective strategic planning, and more timely development of targeted crisis avoidance strategies. For example, in one of the earliest writings on the subject, J. Carroll Bateman urged public relations professionals to emphasize “the future factor,” as a stimulus to behave more ethically by taking a long-term approach to communication. Thirty years later, Judy VanSlyke Turk proposed a “sequential futures model” based on a combination of environmental scanning; trend extrapolation based on historic events; Delphi studies tapping the judgments of decision makers, staff, and experts; and hypothetical scenario building. She argued that incorporating these futures techniques into regular professional practice would make it possible for an organization not only to predict but also take a proactive role in constructing its own operational context.

The term futurism is rarely found in the current public relations literature, but the spirit of technology-driven trend analysis and forecasting is alive and well in the social sciences and still present in some strands of public relations research. Today futurist techniques have largely been folded into the growing influence of “big data” research in the social sciences, thanks to a media and communication environment that allows for relatively easy access to previously unthinkable amounts of data, often in close to real time. Data scraping and mining procedures borrowed from computer science and statistical market research provide massive datasets that can be analyzed for patterns on which to base strategic decisions, while social media make it feasible for organizations to develop tailored communication programs targeting increasingly fine-grained segments of stakeholders.

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