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In recent years, the acronym VUCA has gained traction in strategic communication (SC) as an umbrella term that summarizes the recurrent challenges (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) of digital communication environments. However, an integrated reflection on how the VUCA dimensions facilitate a deeper understanding of specific digitalization challenges and how to navigate through these challenges is lacking. This article aims to explore and substantiate the descriptive (how) and prescriptive (how to) potential of VUCA for SC under digitalization conditions.

We first provide a systematic discussion of the four VUCA dimensions based on the general strategy literature. While their descriptive value is undisputed, prescriptive advice on how to respond to these challenges is contradictory. We substantiate this observation in a second empirical step based on problem-centered interviews with strategic communicators at the agency and corporate levels.

Our findings reveal that VUCA facilitates a systematic mapping of digitalization challenges consistently identified by professionals. The proposed strategic responses, however, remain contradictory at the theoretical and empirical levels. Hence, we propose the VUCA radar as a comprehensive descriptive and prescriptive framework.

The radar provides (a) a systematic overview of recurrent digitalization challenges to SC at the industry and practice levels and (b) prescriptive advice on how to navigate through these challenges by balancing contradictory strategic responses at the levels of vision, understanding, clarity and agility.

There is a growing worry about people possibly isolating themselves in online bubbles and avoiding contact with ideas that differ from their beliefs, creating a scenario of ideological polarization. To investigate into this matter, this work aims for a reflection about the contingency of communication in social media. Does social media make the experience of communication in the digital space more contingent (providing it with more possibilities, with people accessing different contents and ideas) or less contingent (reducing the available possibilities, making people isolate themselves)?

This is a theoretical work, constructed through bibliographical reviews. To reflect about the question that are posed, the author selected Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory to approach the concept of contingency. In addition to that, the author presented the main arguments of the debates about echo chambers and online bubbles. In the end, the author combined the two reviews together using elements of the Luhmannian theory and drew some conclusions about the initial question.

The study concluded that social media have an ambivalent potential regarding contingency in the digital space: it can both expand or reduce the available possibilities of communication, depending on criteria like topic, potential of diffusion and focus of attention. There is no one-side effect.

The approach at echo chambers does not reflect “the” form of contingency in social media, but “a” form. Therefore, the study cannot provide any general conclusions about the relation between contingency and social media. The digital space is a large one, and more studies are required to achieve more substantial propositions.

The research has an originality value both for systems theory and social media studies. First, because, as far as the author knows, no other system-theoretical argument has taken the connection between contingency and social media as a primary analysis object. Second, because of a theoretical interpretation effort, the studies of echo chambers indicate mixed results about the phenomenon of online isolation, but no attempt was made to make sense of these mixed results from a specific sociological theory. The author did that by using Luhmann's theoretical framework, which proved to be a good tool for explaining and unifying these different results on a more abstract level.