In addition to the judging process of The Climate Fiction Contest & The Anthology Project (Tirol), Dr Oliver Som and Dr Antje Bierwisch will lead a study of all optimistic short stories submitted by the 14 December 2022 deadline. The aim of their study is to identify recurring patterns of thought, ideas about the future, clusters of ideas, and contexts of meaning and argumentation structures across all texts.
A futurological meta-analysis of all texts will also be carried out by means of a software-supported qualitative content analysis and additional bibliometrics. For example:
- In what dimensions do young people think about a sustainable future?
- What role do social, economic, political, or cultural factors play?
- And which ‘actors’ (people, organisations, groups…) do they think of in this context?
- What wishes and hopes, but also fears and barriers emerge?
- Which possible paths towards a sustainable transformation of our society can be found in the stories?
Furthermore, the analysis should show which solution approaches can be found in the stories. The MCI team will analyse what role do technological and social innovations play in the pupils’ ideas. Can exciting and innovative solutions be identified that have not yet been thought of and could they be a basis for sustainable transition in Tyrol?
Last but not least, the MCI team also want to find out to what extent the young people’s ideas about the future are shaped by assumptions and framework conditions that exist today (e.g., the COVID crisis, war in Ukraine, perceived vulnerability of today’s socio-economic systems).
Read more about the Strategic Foresight work of Dr Oliver Som, and the Futures Literacy work of Climate Contest Judge Dr Antje Bierwisch.