Periodic Reporting for period 4 - PROFECI (Mediating the Future: The Social Dynamics of Public Projections)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-08-01 al 2025-01-31
The PROFECI project (“Mediating the Future: The Social Dynamics of Public Projections”) examines how societies imagine and communicate their collective futures—and how these projections shape actions in the present. Humans are uniquely capable of envisioning the future, and these visions may shape decisions at both the personal and societal levels. In today’s complex media environment, projections are shaped, disseminated, and contested by a range of actors—including experts, politicians, journalists, and citizens.
PROFECI investigates the dynamics behind this process: How are possible futures constructed, negotiated, and communicated in the public sphere? What roles do journalists, experts, politicians, and ordinary citizens play in shaping collective expectations? And how do these projected futures influence how people think, feel, and act?
The project focuses on four key stages in the life cycle of public projections: their construction, co-creation, evolution over time, and public reception. Drawing on a wide range of methods—from in-depth interviews and focus groups to large-scale text analysis and cross-national surveys—PROFECI examines projections across critical cases such as national elections, the COVID-19 pandemic, and ongoing conflicts.
Understanding how projections are formed and shared is vital for democracy and public life. Projections not only inform policy debates and media narratives but also shape public trust and political participation. By examining how people and institutions communicate about the future, PROFECI offers new insights into how societies navigate uncertainty and imagine what comes next. It also encourages a more reflective and responsible approach to future-oriented communication—one that recognizes the power of projections not only to describe possible outcomes, but to influence which of those outcomes eventually materialize.
PROFECI investigates the dynamics behind this process: How are possible futures constructed, negotiated, and communicated in the public sphere? What roles do journalists, experts, politicians, and ordinary citizens play in shaping collective expectations? And how do these projected futures influence how people think, feel, and act?
The project focuses on four key stages in the life cycle of public projections: their construction, co-creation, evolution over time, and public reception. Drawing on a wide range of methods—from in-depth interviews and focus groups to large-scale text analysis and cross-national surveys—PROFECI examines projections across critical cases such as national elections, the COVID-19 pandemic, and ongoing conflicts.
Understanding how projections are formed and shared is vital for democracy and public life. Projections not only inform policy debates and media narratives but also shape public trust and political participation. By examining how people and institutions communicate about the future, PROFECI offers new insights into how societies navigate uncertainty and imagine what comes next. It also encourages a more reflective and responsible approach to future-oriented communication—one that recognizes the power of projections not only to describe possible outcomes, but to influence which of those outcomes eventually materialize.
Over the course of the project, the PROFECI team developed a comprehensive framework for analyzing how public projections are constructed, communicated, and received. The project combined theoretical innovation with methodological development, resulting in a robust toolkit for examining future-oriented discourse.
The team identified five key components that make up a projection: the predicted outcome, the estimated likelihood, its evaluation (how good or bad the projected future would be), the anchors (the information or reasoning it is based on), and its behavioral implications (the actions it suggests). These components were studied in both media texts and citizens’ expectations, across cases such as the Israeli, French, and U.S. elections and the COVID-19 pandemic.
PROFECI employed a multi-method approach, including in-depth interviews with journalists, focus groups and panel surveys with citizens, and advanced computational tools capable of detecting and analyzing projections in millions of news and social media texts. These tools were made publicly available, and the project’s outcomes were published in leading academic journals.
Among the project’s key findings are:
(1) While journalists regularly produce future-oriented coverage, they do so with ambivalence—balancing external demands with professional norms by integrating projections into factual reporting or using non-committal language;
(2) In future-oriented news discourse, journalists employ distinct trust-building strategies—such as facticity, authority, and transparency—to present projections as credible, despite the inherent uncertainty involved;
(3) Projections are often co-constructed by multiple actors—especially in hybrid media environments—through processes such as amplification, distillation, elaboration, and contestation, forming complex ecosystems of collective futures;
(4) People’s projections are often shaped more by emotional and identity-based factors—such as wishful thinking—than by factual information;
(5) Different media outlets (e.g. mainstream vs. alternative) contribute to polarized outlooks on the future;
(6) Projections can shape real-world behaviors, such as voter turnout, with optimism fostering political participation—particularly when elections are perceived as competitive.
The team identified five key components that make up a projection: the predicted outcome, the estimated likelihood, its evaluation (how good or bad the projected future would be), the anchors (the information or reasoning it is based on), and its behavioral implications (the actions it suggests). These components were studied in both media texts and citizens’ expectations, across cases such as the Israeli, French, and U.S. elections and the COVID-19 pandemic.
PROFECI employed a multi-method approach, including in-depth interviews with journalists, focus groups and panel surveys with citizens, and advanced computational tools capable of detecting and analyzing projections in millions of news and social media texts. These tools were made publicly available, and the project’s outcomes were published in leading academic journals.
Among the project’s key findings are:
(1) While journalists regularly produce future-oriented coverage, they do so with ambivalence—balancing external demands with professional norms by integrating projections into factual reporting or using non-committal language;
(2) In future-oriented news discourse, journalists employ distinct trust-building strategies—such as facticity, authority, and transparency—to present projections as credible, despite the inherent uncertainty involved;
(3) Projections are often co-constructed by multiple actors—especially in hybrid media environments—through processes such as amplification, distillation, elaboration, and contestation, forming complex ecosystems of collective futures;
(4) People’s projections are often shaped more by emotional and identity-based factors—such as wishful thinking—than by factual information;
(5) Different media outlets (e.g. mainstream vs. alternative) contribute to polarized outlooks on the future;
(6) Projections can shape real-world behaviors, such as voter turnout, with optimism fostering political participation—particularly when elections are perceived as competitive.
PROFECI advanced knowledge and methods in several important ways. Conceptually, it redefined projections as socially embedded, future-oriented communicative acts composed of distinct components: predicted outcome, likelihood, evaluation, anchors, and behavioral implications. This naunced conceptualization enables more precise analysis of how projections function in public discourse and individual cognition. The project also introduced the concept of predictive agency—referring to an actor’s active participation in predictive knowledge-making within the multi-platform, multi-directional processes of contemporary media environments. Additionally, it reconceptualized affective forecasting—typically studied from an individual psychological perspective—as a discursive and collective phenomenon shaped by media consumption and political identities, with implications for political participation. These conceptual contributions integrate insights from communication studies, political science, psychology, and sociology, moving beyond conventional views of forecasting.
Methodologically, PROFECI introduced new strategies for measuring complex constructs in public discourse. It developed a modular pipeline for computationally identifying projections and classifying their components, and proposed a novel approach to evaluation analysis that addresses key limitations of traditional sentiment analysis. The project also advanced the Serial Focus Groups method for studying how expectations evolve through group interaction over time—an innovation that bridges qualitative depth with longitudinal insight.
Empirically, the project’s multi-method design enabled new forms of comparison across countries, journalistic cultures, and social contexts. The findings offer nuanced insights into how projections are produced, co-constructed, received, and acted upon. These outcomes significantly extend existing research in fields such as political communication (e.g. shifting the focus from poll effects to discursive constructions), journalism studies (e.g. how journalists manage uncertainty and build trust), and media effects (e.g. how different outlets shape optimism). By bringing these strands together, PROFECI offers an integrated account of the social life of future-oriented discourse—laying the groundwork for future research and societal engagement.
Beyond academic contributions, the project’s results were widely disseminated through publications, presentations, videos, and public talks. The tools and insights developed by PROFECI have societal relevance: they encourage more reflective practices among journalists, support critical media literacy among citizens, and promote a more constructive orientation to the future—one that can help societies pursue desired futures and avoid undesirable ones.
To learn more, visit the project’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@Profeci_Huji(si apre in una nuova finestra)) and the PROFECI website (http://profeci.net(si apre in una nuova finestra)).
Methodologically, PROFECI introduced new strategies for measuring complex constructs in public discourse. It developed a modular pipeline for computationally identifying projections and classifying their components, and proposed a novel approach to evaluation analysis that addresses key limitations of traditional sentiment analysis. The project also advanced the Serial Focus Groups method for studying how expectations evolve through group interaction over time—an innovation that bridges qualitative depth with longitudinal insight.
Empirically, the project’s multi-method design enabled new forms of comparison across countries, journalistic cultures, and social contexts. The findings offer nuanced insights into how projections are produced, co-constructed, received, and acted upon. These outcomes significantly extend existing research in fields such as political communication (e.g. shifting the focus from poll effects to discursive constructions), journalism studies (e.g. how journalists manage uncertainty and build trust), and media effects (e.g. how different outlets shape optimism). By bringing these strands together, PROFECI offers an integrated account of the social life of future-oriented discourse—laying the groundwork for future research and societal engagement.
Beyond academic contributions, the project’s results were widely disseminated through publications, presentations, videos, and public talks. The tools and insights developed by PROFECI have societal relevance: they encourage more reflective practices among journalists, support critical media literacy among citizens, and promote a more constructive orientation to the future—one that can help societies pursue desired futures and avoid undesirable ones.
To learn more, visit the project’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@Profeci_Huji(si apre in una nuova finestra)) and the PROFECI website (http://profeci.net(si apre in una nuova finestra)).