Complexity and New Media Representations

The analysis of complexity is so important as the study of the way in which complexity is communicated in today’s world. So far the sociological debate has interpreted new media either within a technological perspective or through a critical approach. This contribution aims at presenting an analysis of the new media environment within the perspective of the theory of complexity. New media as the main conduit of today social communication represents both an hyper-complex environment in itself and the representation of an hyper-complex world. According to Luhmann sociology should be an unveiling science. However the same unveiling attitude hasn’t been implemented by new media studies more prone to the hope of refounding the community and follow the fashion and the enthusiasm towards everything that is or makes the network. These two features constitutes, in Luhmann’s view, an environmental noise with respect to digital communication. In “Theory of Society” Luhmann and De Giorgi consider the topic of the novelty of the communicative processes as an issue of systemic reduction. Following the same path the argument could be extended and be an attempt to read the luhmannian categories of the mass media reality and apply them to the new media context. Then it could be possible to think of new media as an organizational and territorial “network environment” and with respect to social communication as a new binary code of the new media semantic.