Context-responsiveness

Context-responsiveness refers to the quality of a system, artefact or agent of dynamic feedback or adaptation in response to contextual conditions as they evolve in an interactional environment. For the field of communication for social change, the concept of context-responsiveness opens up, in first instance, a new way of looking at change: when something changes, this reverberates in waves of change that expand in interconnected systems. This chapter proposes an analysis of these systems as fluid contexts generated by interactional situations and inclusive of objects, people, activities and psychological processes. This perspective is used to examine critical issues in communication for social change, such as cultural change, human and technical agency, and the design of development initiatives that align dynamically to evolving conditions.