How Human Communication Drives Solutions for Complex Global Wicked Problems

According to recent United Nations assessments, global progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals remains severely constrained, with only thirty-six percent of the one hundred and thirty-nine measurable targets currently on track or exhibiting moderate advancement. Amid these persistent shortcomings, international policy architectures continue to overlook human communication as an indispensable operational mechanism for sustainable development. While scholarly consensus identifies communication as foundational social infrastructure required for establishing interpersonal trust, reinforcing social cohesion, convening multistakeholder collaboration, and orchestrating collective action, the discipline remains conspicuously absent as an independent goal within global development frameworks. Scholars, community organizers, and multilateral governance institutions increasingly observe that disregarding communicative processes jeopardizes international development initiatives. When communicative dimensions are neglected, interventions frequently encounter community mistrust, societal fragmentation, the unchecked circulation of misinformation, and eroding public confidence in governing institutions, demonstrating that sustainable progress cannot be achieved through purely technocratic mandates devoid of social and communicative consideration.

Pressing contemporary emergencies such as accelerating climate disruption, systemic health inequities, pervasive environmental degradation, acute food insecurity, widening digital divides, artificial intelligence governance, and deep structural poverty exemplify quintessential wicked problems. These interconnected crises are defined by profound scientific and epistemic uncertainty, divergent stakeholder priorities, resistance to top-down technocratic management, and intense societal urgency. Beyond their operational complexity, wicked problems remain fundamentally contested in their basic definition, compelling stakeholders to confront difficult questions regarding what must be sustained, for whose benefit, and at whose expense. Addressing these multifaceted challenges requires abandoning traditional models of one-way information dissemination in favor of a transformative communicative praxis. Rather than treating communication as a passive instrument for delivering technical instructions or scientific facts, this transformative approach recognizes communication as an active arena of dialogue, power negotiation, ideological contestation, and democratic deliberation that validates marginalized perspectives and empowers communities to co-create equitable, resilient futures.

To investigate these critical intersections between communication and global problem-solving, a specialized Research Topic curated by Uttaran Dutta, Naíde Müller, and John Parrish-Sprowl brings together thirteen peer-reviewed studies conducted by an international cohort of researchers representing North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Utilizing a broad methodological spectrum—ranging from participatory action research, ethnography, and reflexive thematic analysis to controlled experimental designs and multi-case rhetorical comparisons—these investigations examine communicative processes across four major domains. These interconnected areas include culturally grounded Indigenous praxes, public health vulnerabilities and disparities, informal science learning within museum environments, and strategic media governance paired with behavioral persuasion. By interrogating localized knowledge systems alongside institutional media practices, the collection demonstrates how communication operates simultaneously as a battleground of political struggle and an essential catalyst for systemic transformation across distinct geopolitical and socioeconomic environments worldwide.

The first thematic cluster focuses on culturally grounded, Indigenous, and community-led praxes of eco-social literacy, illustrating how ancestral traditions supply vital alternatives to dominant technocratic models. In Banten, Indonesia, Putri and colleagues examined Papagahan, a traditional oral and participatory communication practice preserved by the Baduy community. Deploying participatory action research and ethnographic observation across five distinct community sessions, the researchers demonstrated that revitalizing Papagahan effectively bridges generational divides, enhances environmental literacy among younger members, and integrates youth as co-planners of sustainable village initiatives. The collaborative research produced tangible community outputs, including localized technology regulations, biopore drainage systems, and environmental waste-management signage. These grassroots interventions directly advanced Sustainable Development Goals 4, 11, 13, 15, and 16, establishing that community-anchored communicative traditions can successfully dismantle top-down developmental hierarchies and foster localized ecological stewardship without imposing external technocratic frameworks.

Expanding this focus on community empowerment and narrative agency, Sowards and Ospanbayeva analyzed grassroots initiatives in Indonesia and Kazakhstan, demonstrating how networked micro-solutions and community mobilization challenge paralyzing climate-doomsday narratives. By shifting public discourse from fatalistic end-of-the-world framing toward actionable, localized micro-interventions, their comparative analysis revealed that optimistic, culturally grounded messaging stimulates sustained civic participation and environmental action under Sustainable Development Goal 13. In Western Australia, Fernando and colleagues documented a community-based participatory project that expanded upon the Missing Piece Group A Streptococcus surveillance study within the remote Kimberley region. Working collaboratively with First Nations communities, the investigators co-created educational storybooks that translated complicated clinical data regarding impetigo, tonsillitis, and rheumatic heart disease into culturally meaningful narratives. This collaborative initiative exemplified equitable knowledge sharing, supported Indigenous health self-determination under Sustainable Development Goal 3, and affirmed that localized knowledge must reshape the very foundation of public health interventions.

The second thematic domain addresses public health disparities, health literacy, and communicative vulnerabilities, demonstrating how structural stigma and linguistic barriers amplify disease burdens among underserved populations. In the coastal settlements of Semarang, Indonesia, Shaluhiyah and colleagues investigated tuberculosis as a wicked problem through in-depth qualitative interviews with twenty-seven community members, patients, and health personnel. The investigation identified six interrelated structural barriers that delay diagnosis and care: the widespread use of euphemisms to avoid explicitly naming tuberculosis, misrecognition of early clinical symptoms, stigmatizing social environments that impose silence, culturally embedded illness narratives, functionality-based definitions of health, and fragmented outreach systems. Concurrently, in Karnataka, India, Kozan and colleagues explored linguistic discordance across eleven spoken languages through reflexive thematic analysis of fifty patients and healthcare providers. Their findings revealed that language mismatches compromise clinical care quality, inflate diagnostic expenses, cause treatment delays, and induce severe emotional distress, highlighting the urgent necessity for translational technologies and institutional health reforms.

Connecting public health challenges with media ethics, Hernandez and Munz analyzed news coverage of violence against women and girls as a persistent wicked problem intersecting with Sustainable Development Goals 5 and 16. Applying a conceptual space-making framework grounded in intersectionality and witnessing, the authors scrutinized journalistic patterns surrounding high-profile cases, including the widespread reporting on Gabby Petito. To reform these reporting dynamics, Hernandez and Munz proposed survivor-centered, action-oriented ethical guidelines designed to foster accountable media engagement.

The third thematic domain investigates informal science learning, museum environments, and transdisciplinary engagement models intended to connect technical consensus with public action. In Germany, Theiler and Rödder examined how natural history museum staff navigate the communication of biodiversity loss and sustainability challenges. Drawing upon qualitative staff interviews and document analysis, the authors determined that museum professionals deliberately integrate dissemination, dialogue, and participatory engagement to address wicked problem characteristics—such as epistemic uncertainty, controversy, and societal urgency—while reconciling institutional moral authority with visitor expectations of recreational leisure. In the United States, Schulz and colleagues evaluated a eighteen-month transdisciplinary collaboration between researchers at the University of Minnesota and the Science Museum of Minnesota. Through prototyping and testing five interactive exhibits for the Future of Food exhibition, the project enhanced public food-systems literacy and encouraged consumers to view themselves as active change agents. Across Asia, Gabai examined electric vehicle campaigns in India, plastic-bag reduction efforts in Myanmar, and herder transmedia storytelling in Mongolia, demonstrating that relational, hope-based messaging reduces psychological distance and transforms passive public observation into meaningful co-creation.

The fourth cluster examines strategic message framing, media governance, and policy legitimacy across complex political and agricultural contexts. In Norway, Mjelde and Tønnesen investigated how municipal planners across Grenland, Haugesund, and Sandefjord utilize strategic communication to facilitate climate-friendly transport transitions under Sustainable Development Goal 11. Examining energy transition politics, Okoliko and Iqani analyzed mainstream news coverage alongside public Facebook discussions surrounding South Africa’s 8.5 billion dollar Just Energy Transition Partnership. Their qualitative frame and network analysis revealed sharp discursive divides: elite journalistic outlets predominantly promoted optimistic, government-led narratives of industrial progress while affording community viewpoints only one percent of total coverage. Conversely, public social media comments revealed deep grassroots skepticism, citing historical injustices, procedural exclusion, and widespread concerns that transition financing would be compromised by institutional corruption.

Addressing agricultural biosecurity in southwestern Nigeria, Alabi and colleagues deployed Modified Delphi techniques, focus group discussions, and Photovoice methods to examine communication channels influencing grain farmers’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding toxic aflatoxin contamination. Their findings proved that participatory, visual, and peer-to-peer training methodologies significantly improved farmer adoption of the biocontrol innovation Aflasafe, despite severe financial constraints. In another strategic communication study, Foster and Cho conducted a cross-cultural experiment involving 1,398 participants in Japan and the United States, focusing on plastic-straw usage and hoarding behaviors. The authors discovered that social-image framing generated heightened psychological reactance among American respondents, proving that persuasive messaging must be attuned to cultural contexts to avoid behavioral backlash. Crucially, the collected research demonstrates that securing superficial public compliance differs profoundly from fostering authentic civic participation. As Dutta, Müller, and Parrish-Sprowl emphasize, future sustainable development depends on investigating whether communicative initiatives cultivate lasting collective agency, challenge entrenched institutional power imbalances, and integrate Indigenous knowledge systems into global decision-making architectures.

Subject of Research: The role of human communication in addressing global wicked problems and sustainable development

Article Title: Editorial: The role of human communication in addressing global wicked problems

Article References: Dutta, U., Müller, N., & Parrish-Sprowl, J. (2026). Editorial: The role of human communication in addressing global wicked problems. Frontiers in Communication, 11, Article 2022776. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2026.2022776

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2026.2022776

Keywords: Human Communication, Sustainable Development Goals, Wicked Problems, Public Health, Environmental Governance, Participatory Action Research, Science Communication, Media Governance, Editorial, role, human, communication