Decoding the Future: Media, Tech, and Leadership

Note: this summary is from a presentation February 13, 2025 at the World Governments Summit in Dubai. The theme of the conference is “Shaping Future Governments”

Our media models are being transformed by the two “A’s” – “audience” and “agents.”  

The audience of a country is deciding where it will receive the information that it decides to trust. We often lament that trust is decreasing in traditional media or government itself, but in reality, trust is merely diffusing to new people and channels that citizens believe provides them with a view of the world they can understand and relate to. 

Agents represent technology that scours open-source media to find, gather and present the information citizens are asking AI platforms to answer. Our ability to ensure the full narrative of a government is available online is a new way of thinking about our story and its potential reach. We are used to judging news cycles and how well we got a message across in a single interview. Soon, it will be the body of “evidence’ on a topic that we are providing via media, websites and social media channels that will serve as the open-source data lake for agents to pull from and inform citizens daily. 

Gaps in stories will become more evident. Gaps can be filled up with mis- and disinformation more easily. It is a new type of information vacuum that represents an opportunity and a major challenge. 

It is my view that new media models demand that we think and act differently, as well. Here are a few ideas that I shared with the global leaders at The World Governments Summit. 

A New Economic Model for Journalists – successful business leaders who now own media properties are smart enough to know that their existing model will likely decrease in value. Unless we rethink the model. If we think of The Washington Post or Time Magazine or The LA Times, why not make it possible for a journalist to be paid for their work for the outlet AND receive half of the profit for any channel where they build an audience based on their work, e.g., TikTok, YouTube, Reddit or Facebook. Unlock the financial potential for journalists to share in future ad or subscription revenue and we may expand their reach and influence. 

Build Honeypots for Agents – imagine every piece of content you have for a topic (text, audio, video, Q&As, white papers, datasets) and ensure it is available online, so it is easy for agents to find. Imagine that billions of agents will be searching the web 24/7 for information. Will they find what you view as the right information for all topics? Think of this like a greatly expanded website approach. 

Make Content Work for Us – if we just take on more information, it won’t help us. Might even confuse us. With technology, we can improve how we receive and absorb content and improve our productivity. Imagine receiving a 45-minute talk from the Secretary of State that can be translated in a second into any language worldwide or summarized into audio or placed into bulleted points. And imagine asking a question in an internal app and it gets you the answer from across all data worldwide within your department. In seconds. This is the very beginning of unlocking productivity and improving how we absorb a message. 

Focus on Intelligence, Not Listening – what are the influencers of the global diaspora of a country concerned about? What if you could receive alerts on climate change studies worldwide that are directly relevant to the ones your country is funding? Imagine your need and train technology to do the work for you. While at it, remember that “listening” contains so much noise about everything going on that we either tune it out or complain about it. We don’t have to anymore. 

The Knowledge Stack – the IT team has their technology stack. Communicators need to build their knowledge stack to partner with it.  It means that communications should be fluent in knowing their data sources (what are we missing?), how to ask questions (the art of prompts), which agents are most valuable (agentic library) and think about what their “data puddle” consists of, so you are pulling from information that is most relevant to your needs. 

Reframe Disinformation as “Data Pollution” or “Cognitive Security” – we have become too accepting of mis- and disinformation as a problem that exists with which we must live. That type of growing acceptance of a bad status quo is a signal that we must reframe the issue. Governments have done a good job of setting up environmental departments to reduce pollution of our air and waterways. How about our neurons? The term data pollution brings this to life. And what do we do about it? Well, we have a responsibility to improve the cognitive security of our citizens. We have a lot of work ahead of us. 

The pace of change today will feel slow in a few years’ time. How we prepare now will make the difference in our ability to reach our citizens, strengthen our countries and the world and improve how we serve each other. 

It is my view that communications leaders play an important role in how we embrace the two A’s. We will be “the compass” that navigates the pros and cons of AI.

Watch Bob's speech at the summit, including the Q&A:

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