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Strategic Communication and Metamodernism. Shall We Dance? Towards Complexity Beyond Linear Compromise

Howard Nothhaft
Lund University
Nina Overton-de Klerk
University of Johannesburg
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Copyright (c) 2025 Howard Nothhaft, Nina Overton-de Klerk

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Strategic Communication and Metamodernism. Shall We Dance? Towards Complexity Beyond Linear Compromise. (2025). Communicare: Journal for Communication Studies in Africa, 44(1), 4-23. https://doi.org/10.36615/ka65me09
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  • Submited: August 3, 2024
  • Published: May 6, 2025

Abstract

This article is the result of further joint reflection by the authors, building on their previous arguments that the shifts that gave rise to strategic communication as a discipline suggest linear compromises between modernism and postmodernism. It also provides a scrutiny of metamodernism as a contemporary academic agenda within a complexity framework, and explores whether strategic communication has to an extent not always shown elements of metamodernism. Following an analysis of key figures of metamodern thought and introducing the “dance” of the double pendulum as a metaphor, the authors discuss key challenges that metamodern thinking poses to strategic communication scholars. These require, among other things, a commitment to the species, ironic sincerity, a commitment to complexity on the problem as well as on the solution side, and a “both‒and” realist epistemology and constructionist epistemology at the same time. In conclusion, implications for strategic communication are put forward.

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How to Cite
Strategic Communication and Metamodernism. Shall We Dance? Towards Complexity Beyond Linear Compromise. (2025). Communicare: Journal for Communication Studies in Africa, 44(1), 4-23. https://doi.org/10.36615/ka65me09

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