One characteristic – or, perhaps, illusion – of the new strategic communication is its homage to analytics. The capacity to think through the contours of a local context and the possible impact of various ways to deploy the media have been deepened in recent years. There has been a revolution in the ability to collect and analyze vast amounts of data points, often arising from collecting information on millions of social media interactions and applications of such technologies as mobile phones. In this chapter, however, I focus on modes of understanding based on more traditional qualitative techniques, interviews, focus groups and informal surveys, often ethnographic in temperament. All of these together can be captured in a concept that might be called a diagnostic of information ecologies. This approach seeks to overcome predispositions, assumptions, even ideologies – all of which may limit analysis and curb appreciation of empirical observations. A diagnostic seeks to trace how particular ideas leak into a society and, over time or suddenly, change public opinion and local and regional loyalties. As Nicole Stremlau, who has helped shape the concept, puts it in her definition: