Information and Influence: Collective Information Processing Under Societal Threat

How can we ensure that societies adapt to the threats confronting us in the 21st Century? From climate change to civil unrest and extremism, solving these complex societal threats will require coordinated collective responses at a scale not otherwise seen in the 21st Century. Yet recent world events involving political interference and misinformation demonstrate that the process of collective adaptation can be fragile and easily disrupted. This book offers a timely and compelling theoretical framework to make sense of the individual and group processes, and societal regulatory mechanisms critical to the process of collective adaptation. Namely, the Societal Threat, Psychosocial Security, and Collective Information Processing (SPCIS, pronounced species) theoretical framework. Drawing upon expertise ranging across the cognate disciplines, this book distils critical insights from contemporary scholarship to discuss the psychological processes involved in the way people think, feel, and act when faced with societal threats, how public discourse can be harnessed to make sense of threats, and the role of public institutions in facilitating and creating adaptive responses to threats. Offering a unique perspective on critical junctures and opportunities, this book highlights what is needed to achieve the adaptation necessary to address current and future societal threats.