“From rear-view mirror to future radar” – Jörg Forthmann on modern crisis management with AI

Interview with Jörg Forthmann, Managing Director of the IMWF and expert in crisis communication

AG CommTech: Jörg, why is classic crisis monitoring no longer sufficient today?

Jörg Forthmann: Traditional monitoring works with search words. The problem is that you only recognize crises that you have anticipated beforehand. Alerts do come in, but in practice often nobody reads them thoroughly enough. As a result, issues that are slowly building up are easily overlooked. This means you miss out on valuable time in which you could still take calm countermeasures.

AG CommTech: What is the next step beyond this classic search?

Jörg Forthmann: It becomes more ambitious when you combine virality and tonality. If a topic picks up speed quickly and at the same time is predominantly viewed negatively, this is a clear signal of a crisis. However: At this point, the crisis has already developed its own momentum. You can recognize it when it is already on a steep upward trajectory – which is still quite late.

AG CommTech: You often talk about “topic modeling”. What exactly is behind it?

Jörg Forthmann: Topic modeling is an AI application that automatically forms clusters of semantically similar texts in large amounts of data. This means that even unknown crisis topics can be identified – i.e. things that you didn’t have on your screen with search terms. In a visualization, you can see at a glance which topics are latently negative and which are hot. This allows you to take a closer look at inconspicuous clues at an early stage.

AG CommTech: Can you give an example?

Jörg Forthmann: Yes, we analyzed airports, including Nuremberg. The protests by climate activists were very evident there in the summer of 2024. It was interesting to note that while all airports were negatively affected, Nuremberg fared slightly better overall. Nevertheless, there were also latent crisis issues there, which are important for the press spokesperson to be pre-emptively prepared for.

AG CommTech: You are currently working on an “Emerging Trend Detector”. What makes this tool special?

Jörg Forthmann: The Emerging Trend Detector applies topic modeling to the data on a daily basis and shows which topics are currently gaining momentum. This allows you to recognize which developments are gaining momentum before they become big – whether positive or negative. This is worth its weight in gold: you can use “trend surfing” to stay on top of positive trends and take early countermeasures in the event of negative developments. In the case of completely surprising events – the famous “black swans” – this tool also reaches its limits. But in all other cases, it provides us with an invaluable early warning system.

AG CommTech: You also talk about “predictive intelligence”. How does this differ from monitoring?

Jörg Forthmann: Predictive intelligence goes one step further. It creates a data room, checks variables and calculates the impact of communication measures in the future. This allows you to optimize crisis responses even before they are played out. What’s particularly exciting is that you can “feed” the AI with past crisis cases so that it can better assess similar situations. Unlike generative AI models, it does not hallucinate. If there is no data, it says: “I’m sorry, I can’t predict anything.”

AG CommTech: What does this mean in concrete terms for crisis teams in companies?

Jörg Forthmann: You can simulate scenarios in advance and make fact-based decisions in the event of a crisis. Let’s say climate activists block an airport – a case we have already experienced. With predictive intelligence, you can check which communication strategy has the best chance of defusing the crisis. This allows you to move away from gut decisions and towards data-based optimization.

AG CommTech: Many communications departments still work in a very traditional way. How realistic is it that predictive intelligence will soon become standard?

Jörg Forthmann: Very realistic. We are currently seeing a little journey through time: from simple alerting tools that can barely keep up, to topic modeling as a state-of-the-art solution, to predictive intelligence, which will certainly be a typical corporate communication tool in two years’ time. It will make it possible not only to measure the efficiency of measures retrospectively, but also to predict their impact in advance.

AG CommTech: Your conclusion for communication professionals?

Jörg Forthmann: Don’t rely on the rear-view mirror. Monitoring remains important, but without AI-based early warning systems you will recognize crises too late. Use topic modelling to make the unknown visible, try emerging trend detection for early indicators – and prepare yourself with predictive intelligence to optimize crisis reactions in the future. If you set this up now, you will give yourself a real head start in crisis management.