Shaping the zeitgeist: Influencing social processes as the center of gravity for strategic communications in the twenty-first century

► Dynamics of social change, and the social construction of reality, lie at the root of contemporary security problems. ► The objective is to foster the emergence of peaceful social orders. ► We must move beyond the traditional understanding of strategic communications, rooted in the state-centered political-military security paradigm. ► In the new security environment, strategic communications is about influencing the interpretive frames people use to socially construct reality. ► Strategic communications for social change is a long-term battle effort; it does not function in the traditional PR space. We face new dynamics in the world, new problems. Dynamics of social change and the social construction of reality lie at the root of both contemporary security problems and of a clear understanding of the role of strategic communications in resolving them. Success in the current environment is not defined by military victory but by building peaceful social orders, and defeating opponents in the psychological and sociological domain. To understand the role of strategic communications in this new security environment requires an alternative paradigm of sufficient coherence to replace, or supplement, the traditional state-centered security paradigm. We argue that using social change as an alternative paradigm, framed around the theoretical vocabulary of the social construction of reality, generates insights into the role of strategic communications in supporting foreign policy and national security objectives. These are explored in eight lessons learned from our experience of implementing communications for social change in conflict environments.