Self-observation, self-reference and operational coupling in social systems: steps towards a coherent epistemology of mass media

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Juan Miguel Aguado
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Media System ◽  
Autopoietic Systems ◽  
Meaning Systems ◽  
Meaning Production ◽  
Significant Divergence ◽  
The Mass Media

This paper is concerned with the role of self-observation in managing complexity in meaning systems. Revising Niklas Luhmann's theory of mass media, we approach the mass media system as a social sub-system functionally specialized in the coupling of psychic systems' (individuals) self-observation and social systems' self-observation (including, respectively, themselves as each other's internalized environment).According to Autopoietic Systems Theory and von Foerster's second order cybernetics, self-observation presupposes a capability for meta-observation (to observe the observation) that demands a specific distinction between observer and actor. This distinction seems especially relevant in those social contexts where a separation between the action of observation and other social actions is required (in politics, for instance). However, in those social contexts (such as mass-media meaning production) where the defining action is precisely observation (in terms of the differentiation that constitutes the system), the border between observer and actor is blurred.We shall consider the significant divergence between the implicit and the explicit epistemologies of the mass media system, which appears to be characterized by the explicit assumption of a classic objectivist epistemology, on one side, and a relativist epistemology on the other, posing a hybrid epistemic status somewhere in between science and arts.

The main factors influencing the mass media system

2020 ◽  
pp. 18-30
Author(s):  
Federico Subervi-Vélez ◽  
Sandra Rodríguez-Cotto ◽  
Jairo Lugo-Ocando
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Media System ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
The Mass Media

The Politics of the Police

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Bowling ◽  
Robert Reiner ◽  
James W E Sheptycki
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Police Work ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Mass Media

In its fifth edition, The Politics of the Police has been revised, updated, and extended to take account of recent changes in the law, policy, organization, and social contexts of policing. It builds upon the previous editions’ political economy of policing to encompass a wide global and transnational scope, and to reflect the growing diversity of policing forms. This volume explores the highly charged debates that surround policing, including the various controversies that have led to a change in the public’s opinion of the police in recent years, as well as developments in law, accountability, and governance. The volume sets out to analyse what the police do, how they do it and with what effects, how the mass media shape public perceptions of the police, and how globalization, privatization, militarization, and securitization are impacting on contemporary police work. It concludes with an assessment of what we can expect for the future of policing.

scholarly journals Media capture strategies in new authoritarian states: the case of Turkey

Publizistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 637-654
Author(s):  
Gülçin Balamir Coşkun
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Media System ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Mass Media ◽  
New Strategies ◽  
Media Capture

AbstractThis article focuses on the forced transformation of the mass media as an institution in new authoritarian states. It aims to understand the methods used by theses states to control and manipulate the flux of news through the mass media. Turkey’s media system has been chosen as a case study because the recent political developments in the country offer worrisome und devastating examples. This article aims to answer to the following question: How can we classify methods and strategies used by the AKP government to capture the media in Turkey? Why and how do the methods used by the AKP government differ from those applied by previous governments? To answer to these questions, the article draws on media capture as a framework of analysis. It argues that the AKP captured the media by using new strategies which can be divided into three overlapping and interconnected categories: capture by creating its own private media, capture through financial sanctions, and capture by intimidating and criminalizing journalists.

Media & Generations: how user generated content reshape generational identity in the Mass Media System

2010 ◽  
pp. 109-118
Author(s):  
Luca Rossi
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Media System ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
Generational Identity ◽  
The Mass Media

The latest theorizations about generations try to explain the concept as a multi dimensional issue (Donati 2007) through the assumption of a common life experience, shared by the mem- bers, and the emergence of that specific generation as a social-fact itself. The concept of generation then assumes reflexivity process (Giddens 1991) both at an individual and at a collective level. Edmunds (2005) proposed that mass media could be a common landscape able to offer a world-wide shared stage for "concrete historical problems". If the generational ‘we sense' can be described as a meaningful set of connected criteria for interpreting and articulating topics in communication, then mass media would be the place where those ‘criteria' are learnt. Recent evolution of media technologies and the rising case of the so called web 2.0 add an interesting element to the described scenario. While the Mass Media system could have been identified as the place where the generational we sense was constructed, what does it happen today in a media environment where every user can add content (User Generated Content) that is often visible to a lot of unknown spectators? Where do we learn the connected criteria for interpreting and articulating topics? The paper aims to investigate this specific and furtive phenomenon, proposing an innovative methodological approach of analysis of online User Generated Content: blog entries.

scholarly journals The Affordances of the Information and Communication Universe, or Who is Behind the Mass Media

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-98
Author(s):  
Iosif M. Dzyaloshinsky
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Media System ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mass Media ◽  
Pension Benefits

This article examines the specifics and perspectives of the information and communication universe theory for the analysis of the mass media. The aim is to explain the application of the concept of affordance in the context of media theory. The term was introduced by psychologist James J. Gibson to describe the specific inviting nature of objects and events, which, through affordances, suggest an algorithm for subsequent actions. From this point of view, the information and communication universe makes it possible to use it for some important purposes for the subjects of communication. However, the quality and options for implementing the possibilities of affordance depend on the goals, interests and skills of the subject who is trying to work with this affordance. To use an analogy, the same axe could invite some people to chop wood for an old lady, and others to use it as a weapon against her in order to seize her pension benefits. The thesis on the functional usefulness of the category information and communication universe for the analysis of processes in the media system is put forward. Traditional ideas about the specifics of the production and consumption of texts are corrected. The author analyzes the affordances of the Internet as a subsystem of the information and communication universe. It helps to explain the radical differences in the assessment of network digital technologies by representatives of different research schools. The article outlines further prospects for the identification and use of hidden affordances.

scholarly journals KONSTRUKSI REALITAS PEREMPUAN DI MEDIA SUARA NTB

KOMUNIKE ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-48
Author(s):  
M Tamrin
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
Female Victims ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mass Media

This paper aims to fnd out how the construction of the reality of women in the mass media is formed in the reporting and traffcking of people with female victims in the Mass Media. This study focused on the text of the news of rape and traffcking in women in May 2016 in the NTB Suara daily. This paper is a qualitative study using the Teun Van Dijk model discourse analysis method. With this method, the committee will see how women’s discourse is constructed and shaped by mass media through text analysis, social cognition and social contexts. The conclusion is that Suara NTB daily constructs women as victims, not as objects of exploitation, because women are placed as the subject of the narrator and given space to tell themselves or the events experienced.

Mass media and the web in the light of Luhmann’s media system

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Boccia Artieri ◽  
Laura Gemini
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
Ecological Approach ◽  
Media System ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
The Mass Media ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Web ◽  
Operational Logic

The aim of the article is to observe the contemporary media system in the light of Luhmann’s media system, namely a specific function system of society which has witnessed ever greater internal complexity vis-a-vis an environment marked by the spread of the web and social network sites. From the viewpoint of sociocybernetics, the question of increased complexity can be addressed through an ecological approach in order to analyse the distinction between the mass media and the web – in its specific 2.0 evolution, characterized by user-generated content and algorithms. This approach allows to observe the reciprocal relations by preserving the autonomy of the two spheres without resorting to explanations that have to do with hybridization or the blur of the boundaries. In this sense the article analyses Facebook – as an example of web 2.0 operational logic – as a social system distinct from that of the mass media, where the first substantial difference depends on the role played by individuals in reproducing communication and on the role of the algorithm. In this sense mass media and the web are treated on the basis of their relationship of structural coupling by observing how they irritate, or disturb, each other and at the same time maintain their autonomy.

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