A new paper on “World Futures Day 2022: A mixed method approach to identify topics of a global futures agenda” by Mara Di Berardo, MP Comms Director and Italy Node Co-Chair, Simone Di Zio, Italy Node Co-Chair, and Lara Fontanella, has been published on Futures (Volume 154, 2023, 103244).

Abstract: World Futures Day (WFD) 2022 was the ninth edition of the participatory futures method organized in the form of an open 24-hr round-the-world global conversation about possible futures and developing an online open large-scale global participatory discussion among self-selected future oriented people from around the world and the public. The paper aims at understanding what are the main future-oriented suggestions and solutions that emerged during WFD 2022 by applying a mixed method approach to the available data. The original qualitative content analysis is improved with automated techniques of text mining analysis (i.e. probabilistic topic models). Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools to integrate the geographical dimension with the textual data are also experimentally exploited. The output of the analysis, called WFD 2022 Global Futures Agenda, helps the reader cope with the complexity of the topics and of the 24-hour event for further discussion. The analysis shows that the WFD discussion was composed of 4 main clusters and 23 related topics and contents for each: Complex solutions for complex problems, A hyper-technological humanity, Education and learning for a better future, Improving global foresight. In conclusion, further improvements of the methods and of the analysis are discussed.

Highlights:

• Commitment devices and committees for the future can support multi-stakeholder deliberations.
• Supreme Courts could have futurists develop a body of opinions on complex future matters.
• Scenarios as literature could be in our future.
• A mixed method approach can be very useful to analyze group communication in participatory methods.
• WFD 2022 was a future mind massage broadening our understanding of future issues and possibilities.

Video

After the publication, the Italy Node experimented with AI and experimentally realized the following video by using InVideo: a short text resuming the paper above was given to the AI and elaborated by it to create the video. Although something is not faithful to the original and some images are not appropriate, the output seems interesting.

The paper can be accessed for free for 50 days (until Nov. 17, 2023): https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1hr083jdJk-2H

After that day, the report will accessible from the following link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103244

Partners of The Millennium Project for this WFD edition were Humanity+, World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS), World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), and Association of Professional Futurists (APF).

The analysis was supported by the Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd Center for Futuristic Studies at Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University and the World Futures Studies Federation with their 2022 Third Futures Research Grant.