Beyond Wicked: Vibocratic Problems in the Post-Truth Era

Abstract

This essay revisits the classical concept of “wicked problems” as articulated by Rittel, Webber, and Ackoff, and asks whether it remains adequate in an era shaped by post-truth politics, epistemic fragmentation, and neo-orality. While wicked problems captured the complexity and contestation of late-modern governance, they relied on preconditions that are increasingly unstable: shared sense-making institutions, mutual intelligibility, and discursive publics. Today, many societal challenges no longer resist resolution—they resist framing. They mutate in real time, circulate as affective atmospheres, and dissolve under scrutiny.

The essay proposes a tentative new category—vibocratic problems—to describe this emerging class of societal phenomena. These are not merely more complex than wicked problems; they are differently configured: unstable, performative, epistemically fugitive. Drawing on philosophy, media studies, design research, and epistemology, the essay argues for new methodological responses, including abductive, situated, and design-informed approaches. It offers a conceptual table contrasting wicked and vibocratic problems, outlines emerging sites of vibocratic inquiry, and closes with a short reflection on the ethical posture of scholarship in turbulent times.

The contribution is conceptual, diagnostic, and methodological: a call to name the terrain anew—not as a provocation, but as an act of intellectual responsibility.