[Air-l] sociocybernetic media studies

Tue Aug 3 06:10:40 PDT 2004

Hi Jespert,

I´ve had same kind of experiences from few occasions when I´ve tried to explain
the importance of applying Luhmann´s theories in Internet research ;-)
Thank´s for the briefing about Lisbon conference.

Robert 

Robert Arpo
Researcher
Arts Council of Finland

Lainaus jespert <jespert at itu.dk>:

> Dear All!
> 
> I have just returned home from the 5th international conference of 
> sociocybernetics in Lisbon. It was a very successful conference 
> academically, socially and culturally  here I will comment on the 
> academic part and only on papers with regard to media studies using 
> Luhmann. I do this to inform you about the existence of a field of media 
> studies that I suppose that only few of you are familiar with  for 
> example did I not have my paper accepted to the AIR-conference because 
> the reviewers obviously did not understand it. All the papers will 
> appear on the ISA RC 51 homepage in the future.
> 
> The papers will be described in random order:
> 
> Rudi Laermans, had a paper called: 
Media, Morality and Contemporary 
> World Society: A Critical Appraisal of Niklas Luhmanns Systems 
> Theoretical View
. It gives a knowledgeable resume of Luhmanns theory of 
> Mass Media. Rudi is critical regarding Luhmanns claim that the code of 
> Mass Media is information /non-information and put forward the idea that 
> the code could be attention and non-attention. Another idea is that 
> Luhmanns clime, that Mass Media screen out the usual or the everyday 
> should be nuanced in spied of the so-called reality television, which in 
> most cases is 
daily life television
.
> 
> Juan Miguel Aguado builds on Luhmann in his presentation: 
Mass Media, 
> Spectacle and Modernity: From Meta-Experiential Narratives to Artificial 
> Input Environments
 The paper argues that the media system introduces 
> both experience and identity into market dynamics. On the basis of their 
> functional segmentation from both technology and economy, mass media 
> emerge as a social subsystem that operates uncertainty absorption by 
> means of transforming individual and social experiential frames into 
> meta-experiences. The media system implements the interest/non interest 
> organizational code that specifically involves the re-entry of the code 
> in both actor systems and social systems (the former, in terms of 
> experiential events as interactions; the latter, in terms of commercial 
> events as interactions). The communication pattern emerging from such 
> transformation can be outlined under the concept of spectacle, which 
> Miguel elaborates on.
> 
> Søren Brier had some interesting remarks with reference to Luhmanns 
> theory on Mass Media in his presentation: 
Ficta: The New Scientific 
> Novel
. Søren said that 
Ficta
 which he defines as a new mode or type 
> of science popularisation e.g. the works of Michael Crichton and Greg 
> Egan. In a societal perspective this is one out of many examples on how 
> we as scientist has to find new ways to communicate to fit in to the 
> framework set by the mass media under pressure from politicians.
> 
> Giulia Caramaschi presented a paper called: 
Observing The Digital 
> Divide: Technological Communication and the Semantics of World-Society
. 
> The paper claims that definitions of 
Information Society
 and 
Digital 
> Divide
 can be considered as guidelines that society adopts to observe 
> it self and direct its operations recursively. The Digital Divide, is 
> seen as building at a semantic level, and becomes a parameter through 
> which society describes its boundaries: access or non-access to 
> technology outlines the criteria of inclusion and exclusion qualifying 
> the structure of society.
> 
> Vessela Misheva presented a paper called: 
The Social Function of the 
> System of The Mass Media
. Vessela claims that Mass Media as described 
> by Luhmann cannot be seen as a function system! The reason is that 
> unlike all other systems, which have institutionalized permanent social 
> roles that presuppose uninterrupted and continuous production processes, 
> the system of the mass media has institutionalized what Goffman termed 
> 
a discrepant social role.
 According to Vessela, in principle, 
> discrepant social roles cannot support the emergence of an entirely new 
> social system. The latter becomes possible only when the discrepant role 
> becomes modified and is transformed into a permanent role. Vessela put 
> forward the idea that an additional social role can be assigned to the 
> mass media, namely, that of 
conflict-management.

> 
> Michael Paetau presented a paper called: 
Information Technology and The 
> Long-Term Memory of Society
. This paper asks: How it is possible to 
> make knowledge which is generated in separate contexts, in specific 
> localities, and bound to specific actors, available to the system as a 
> whole? And analyses successful transformation of knowledge as coupled to 
> three conditions: first, to a condensation of social experience and its 
> decontextualized sedimentation in a suitable storage media; second, to 
> the effective transfer of this sediment respecting factual, spatial, 
> temporal, and social aspects; third, to the (re-)actualization of the 
> knowledge sediments in practical problem-solving situations, which 
> commonly differ from the original knowledge generation context.
> 
> My own presentation (Jesper Taekke) was called: 
Usenet Newsgroups as 
> Mediated Communication Systems
 But was mostly in the oral presentation 
> about the theory that I am building on: 
The Media Sociography
 My claim 
> is that we can build on Luhmann regarding media studies but that we when 
> talking about technical media must integrate the so called Toronto 
> school (Innis, McLuhan, Ong, Eisenstein, Meyrowitz etc.) in the analysis 
>  and I presented a possible framework to do that.
> 
> 
> Best Regards
> Jesper
> 
> -- 
> Jesper Tække - MA. Ph.D.-Student - IT University of Copenhagen - Dept. of
> Digital Aesthetics & Communication -  Glentevej 67 - DK-2400 NV Copenhagen NW
> - Phone +45 3816 8888 - Direct +45 3816 8881 - Fax +45 3816 8899 -
> http://home16.inet.tele.dk/jesper_t/  - e-mail: jespert at it-c.dk 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Air-l mailing list
> Air-l at aoir.org
> http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l
> 