Meaning-Making

Definition

Meaning-Making examines meaning-making within the broader domain of how people and communities create identity, purpose and shared meaning through stories.

Why this matters

Meaning-Making can materially affect human agency, capability, belonging, livelihoods, culture, trust, resilience and long-term societal outcomes.

Research questions

Under which conditions does meaning-making improve human and system outcomes, how do effects vary across populations and contexts, and what safeguards prevent dependency, exclusion, distortion or loss of agency?

Hypotheses

A transparent, participatory and human-directed approach to meaning-making, with explicit safeguards and longitudinal evaluation, will improve narrative coherence; authenticity; agency; meaning; memory accuracy; audience understanding; manipulation resistance compared with opaque, automation-first or short-term approaches.

Proposed methods

narrative analysis; interviews; longitudinal biography studies; controlled storytelling tasks; audience interpretation; manipulation testing; literature and policy review; expert and affected-user interviews; reproducibility testing; methods adapted specifically to Meaning-Making

Stakeholders and beneficiaries

creators; cultural custodians; communities; educators; researchers; publishers; platforms; collecting societies; libraries; archives; museums; regulators; funders