Dreaming with open eyes: the counter-idea to Black Mirror.
White Mirror is a method for future stories that make real tensions and room for action visible. It starts with worldbuilding, a world with its own logic, captured in a world profile. Begun in 2024 as a blog post on Einbildungskanal, developed in 2026 into a guide for newsrooms in the Future of News Fellowship at Media Lab Bayern.
A thought experiment with hope.
Realistically optimistic, not naive.
Black Mirror works above all as a cultural phenomenon. The doomsday mirror fits the zeitgeist and feeds hopelessness. There is hardly any counter-culture. Media makers who want to tell constructive stories have the will. What usually holds them back is the craft.
White Mirror tells of people who keep acting in partly dystopian conditions and create small real-utopian artefacts along the way. Gripping stories live on conflict. So White Mirror works with real dilemmas and leaves the flat, picture-perfect utopia aside.
For newsrooms that know many ways of depicting problems and are looking for a craft for the question of how societies actually act. And for everyone who opens doors, with funding, space for a writers' room or as a partner for a pilot episode.
In January 2024 my blog Einbildungskanal published “White Mirror: Ein Gedankenspiel mit Hoffnung” (a thought experiment with hope). The idea came up during a card game at the start of a co-living stay on Madeira, a counterpart to the dystopian Netflix series that gives hope. The thought experiment alone makes the space of what is possible bigger.
Read the text (in German) ↗
Black Mirror reflects the downfall. White Mirroring tells futures in which people keep their agency, in three steps: scenario, character, conflict.
A storytelling process for newsrooms and media makers. Becoming a documented method in the Future of News Fellowship at Media Lab Bayern.
Masterclass “Journalismus statt Silicon Valley: Wie Medien Zukunft machen können” (journalism instead of Silicon Valley: how media can make the future), Medientage München, 21 October 2026. Pitch with the other Future of News fellows, in German.
On my blog Einbildungskanal I experiment with method and text. Five stories came out of it in 2026, all in German.
A workshop in which you try White Mirroring yourselves, for newsrooms, organisations and everyone who wants to tell the future differently.
Request a workshop ↗jonas@youngk.de
