How do social actors construct multimodal representations of the future—that is, representations of imagined futures using different combinations of modes (e.g., words, images, numbers)—to enable and constrain audiences in engaging with the future? Despite growing interest in the role of imagined futures, research has not fully addressed this question, with extant work positing that imagined futures are either enacted together or imposed on audiences by more powerful actors. Highlighting the shared act of representation, we argue that these two approaches can be merged into a new understanding, bringing to light how the structure or ‘grammar’ of multimodal representations of the future can construe opportunities for participation in different gradients between openness and closure. We conceptualize representations of the future as incomplete, malleable, and evaluative, and employ social semiotic theory to draw out the implications of taking seriously their multimodal character. Drawing on a multimodal corpus of archival urban planning data, we show how representations constitute different multimodal configurations offering, recommending, demonstrating, or predicting imagined futures. Our study advances research on the communicative underpinnings of imagined futures by moving beyond the dichotomy of open and closed futures. We further contribute to multimodal scholarship in organization and management theory by unpacking the affordances of multimodality for imagined futures.
