Publications 2013-2019
Fuchs, Christian: Nationalism on the Internet. Critical Theory and Ideology in the Age of Social Media and Fake News. Routledge, New York, London, 2019.
Dodig-Crnkovic, Gordana, Burgin, Mark (eds.): Philosophy and Methodology of Information. World Scientific, Singapore, 2019.
Joseph E. Brenner
Mark Burgin
Rainer E. Zimmermann and Zhang Shiaomeng
José María Díaz Nafría, Mark Burgin and Blanca Rodriguez-Bravo
Click on every title to get the abstract of the chapters of the members of the Emergent Systems group listed here.
Fuchs, Christian: Soziale Medien und Kritische Theorie. Eine Einführung. utb, München, 2019.
German translation of the second English edition of "Social Media – A Critical Introduction".
Zimmermann, Rainer E., Järvenpää, Silke, Dobler, Ralph-Miklas (eds.): Signifikant. Jahrbuch für Strukturwandel und Diskurs 2 2019, xenomoi, Berlin, 2019.
Senka Grossauer, Spomenka Celebic
Populism and Social Media.
Rainer E. Zimmermann
Savage Thought and Totalitarianism.
Francesca Vidal
Irrational discourse as a form of violation of the other with words.
Francesca Vidal
Verletzende Bilder und Worte – Hate Speech auf Websites.
Lena Hendlmeier
Reloaded – Das kreative Spiel der digitalen Welt.
Doris Zeilinger
Fiktion und Fake.
Wolfgang Hofkirchner
Zur Konzeptualisierung der Wahrheit aus der Sicht der Praxeo-Onto-Epistemologie.
Rainer E. Zimmermann
Principiis Obstate! Totale Struktur und kritische Funktion.
Rainer E. Zimmermann
Hegel und Bloch.
Zimmermann, Rainer E., Järvenpää, Silke, Dobler, Ralph-Miklas (eds.): Signifikant. Jahrbuch für Strukturwandel und Diskurs 1 2018, xenomoi, Berlin, 2018.
Rainer E. Zimmermann
Philosophische Grundlagen.
Carayannis, Elias G., Campbell, David F. J., Efthymiopoulos, Marios Panagiotis (eds.): Handbook of Cyber-Development, Cyber-Democracy, and Cyber-Defense. Springer Nature, Heidelberg, 2018.
Hamid R. Ekbia
Stefan Hügel, Hans-Jörg Kreowski and Dietrich Meyer-Ebrecht
José María Díaz Nafría
Tomas Sigmund
Click on every title to get the abstract of the chapters of the members of the Emergent Systems group listed here.
Click here to get to the publisher's site and see the whole table of contents.
Fuchs, Christian: Social Media. A Critical Introduction. Sage, London, 2nd edition, 2017.
This Second Edition:
- Lays bare the structures and power relations at the heart of our media landscape.
- Explores the sharing economy of Uber and Airbnb in a brand new chapter.
- Takes us into the politics and economy of social media in China.
- Puts forward powerful arguments for how to achieve a social media that serves the purposes of a just and fair world.
Burgin, Mark, Hofkirchner, Wolfgang (eds.): Information Studies and the Quest for Transdisciplinarity. Unity through Diversity. World Scientific, Singapore, 2017.
Joseph E. Brenner, Mark Burgin, Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, Rainer Feistel, Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Rainer E. Zimmermann et al.
This book is the second volume of a two-volume edition based on the International Society for Information Studies Summit Vienna 2015 on "The Information Society at the Crossroads. Response and Responsibility of the Sciences of Information".
Hofkirchner, Wolfgang, Burgin, Mark (eds.): The Future Information Society. Social and Technological Problems. World Scientific, Singapore, 2017.
Mark Burgin, John Collier, Yagmur Denizhan, José María Díaz Nafría, Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Asimina Koukou, Hans-Jörg Kreowski, Robert K. Logan, Tomas Sigmund, Christian Stary et al.
This book is the first volume of a two-volume edition based on the International Society for Information Studies Summit Vienna 2015 on "The Information Society at the Crossroads. Response and Responsibility of the Sciences of Information".
Hofkirchner, Wolfgang (ed.): Information in Physics and Beyond. The European Physical Journal, Special Topics, 226/2, 2017.
Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, Werner Ebeling, Rainer Feistel, Rainer E. Zimmermann et al.
The special issue covers ten papers that aim at a more consilient account of information, ranging from physics to social science. The role of physics must thereby not understood as that real-world science that can explain any information manifestation, but as necessary yet not sufficient condition for the study of information going beyond physics.
Archer, Margaret S. (ed.): Morphogenesis and Human Flourishing. Springer, Dordrecht, 2017.
Wolfgang Hofkirchner
This is Maggie Archer's fifth edited volume of the Social Morphogenesis Series. Wolfgang Hofkirchner contributed chapter 13: Creating Common Good: The Global Sustainable Information Society as the Good Society. Here is the abstract:
The ‘good’, eudaimonic society is characterised here as a society that cultivates the commune bonum, the common good, the commons. The topicality of the issue of the commons does not come as a surprise, because the dangers of an anthropogenic breakdown of our societal life originate from rising dysfunctions regarding the commons. The commons are according to a social systems view defined as any emerging synergetic relations, which converges with defining it as a relational good as relational sociology does. In order to remove frictions in the functioning of the commons, a transformation is needed. Social morphogenesis can transform the current societal conditions into those of a true ‘morphogenic’ society in which a ratchet is set up: the flourishing of the actors conditions the flourishing of the society and vice versa. This transformation has to take into consideration a global, a sustainable and an informational imperative. The global sustainable information society is the concrete utopia of today.
Burgin, Mark: Theory of Knowledge. World Scientific, Singapore, 2016.
This book aims to synthesise different directions in knowledge studies into a unified theory of knowledge and knowledge processes. It is written for graduate students and researchers in Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Management. It has 964 pages.
Sevignani, Sebastian: Privacy and Capitalism in the Age of Social Media. Routledge, London, 2016.
This book explores commodification processes of personal data and provides a critical framing of the ongoing debate of privacy in the Internet age, using the example of social media and referring to interviews with users.
Archer, Margaret S. (ed.): Morphogenesis and the Crisis of Normativity. Springer, Dordrecht, 2016.
Wolfgang Hofkirchner
This is Maggie Archer's fourth edited volume of the Social Morphogenesis Series. Wolfgang Hofkirchner contributed chapter 12: Ethics from Systems: Origin, Development and Current State of Normativity. Here is the abstract:
Chapter 12 has three sections. The first section puts ethics in a system-theoretical perspective. It deals with the basic question ethics seeks to answer: how are Is and Ought related to each other? Answers matter insofar as they provide different frames for analysing what goes wrong with morals in unbound morphogenesis.
The second section gives an evolutionary account of how moral values came (and still come) into existence. It presents anthropological considerations on the origin of morals. Animals seem to have no morals, at least in the human sense. How then could human morality emerge? An unsolved debate gets support from empirical research: it is about the specifics of human co-operation that makes the difference.
The third section analyses the state of morals in today’s society. It comes to the conclusion that the neoliberal project resulted in a deep moral-ideological crisis.
Allmer, Thomas: Critical Theory and Social Media. Between Emancipation and Commodification. Routledge, London, 2015.
The aim of this book is to study the constraints and emancipatory potentials of new media and to assess to what extent digital and social media can contribute to strengthen the idea of the communication and network commons, and a commons-based information society.
Zimmermann, Rainer E.: Metaphysics of Emergence. Part I: On the Foundation of Systems. xenomoi, Berlin, 2015.
This book provides a mathematically based explication of emergent, complex systems.
Archer, Margaret S. (ed.): Generative Mechanisms Transforming the Social Order. Springer, Dordrecht, 2015.
Wolfgang Hofkirchner
This is Maggie Archer's third edited volume of the Social Morphogenesis Series. Wolfgang Hofkirchner contributed chapter 5: "Mechanisms" at work in Information Society. Here is the abstract:
This chapter deals with ‘mechanisms’ from the perspective of critical systems thinking. ‘Mechanisms’ are rooted in self-organisation. Far from being mechanical, they are contingent dynamisms. They are the cause of the advent of Information Society; they are the cause for the reproduction of Information Society; and they are the cause for a transformation of Information Society.
After explicating critical systems thinking by referring to aims, scope and tools of social science, a critical review of positivist, interpretivist, postmodern and critical theories of the build-up of information society is given. All of them but the last ones focus on one side of a purported dynamism only instead of attempting to integrate several sides for which there is empirical evidence. An example of a dynamism is presented that is crucial for the advent of a Global Sustainable Information Society that would deserve the label ‘Morphogenic Society’. The description of this dynamism makes creative use of the terms ‘antagonism’, ‘agonism’ and ‘synergism’ and explains what the author calls the Logic of the Third.
Archer, Margaret S. (ed.): Late Modernity. Trajecories of Social Change. Springer, Dordrecht, 2014.
Wolfgang Hofkirchner
This is Maggie Archer's second edited volume of the Social Morphogenesis Series. Wolfgang Hofkirchner contributed chapter 6: On the Validity of Describing "Morphogenic Society" as a System and Justifiability of Thinking About It as a Social Formation. Here is the abstract:
Chapter 6 contends that the fact we find ‘morphogenesis unbound’ being a tendency of current societal development does not justify to call the latest social formation ‘morphogenic society’. What is indicated by ‘morphogenesis unbound’ is rather a crisis threatening the continuation of civilised life on Earth. This crisis can be overcome if and when reflexivity includes systems reflexivity, that is, the decentering of individual actors from themselves and the extension of their concerns to a supra-individual meta-level that serves as point of orientation of their common actions. Such a state of development would deserve the name ‘morphogenic society’ in contradistinction to the current state which tends to restrict self-reflection.
Fuchs, Christian, and Sandoval, Marisol (eds.): Critique, Social Media and the Information Society. Routledge, London, 2014.
Christian Fuchs
Critique of the Political Economy of Informational Capitalism and Social Media
Wolfgang Hofkirchner
Potentials and Risks for Creating a Global Sustainable Information Society
Sebastian Sevignani, Robert Prey, Marisol Sandoval, Thomas Allmer, Jernej A. Prodnik and Verena Kreilinger
Critical Studies of Contemporary Informational Capitalism: The Perspective of Emerging Scholars
Archer, Margaret S. (ed.): Social Morphogenesis. Springer, Dordrecht, 2013.
Wolfgang Hofkirchner
This is a volume edited by Maggie Archer. It became the starting volume of a five volumes Series in Social Morphogenesis. Wolfgang Hofkirchner contributed chapter 7: Self-Organisation as the Mechanism of Development and Evolution in Social Systems. Here is the abstract:
The chapter explores how close the concepts of morphogenesis and self-organisation are. Both can be seen to have natural science origins though applicable to the long-term history of societies, to events within societies and to contemporary society modernity seems to transform into. Both can be labeled descriptive, explanatory and normative at the same time. That view can be accomplished when resorting to dialectical philosophy, evolutionary systems theory and critical social systems theory, each based upon the former. The argument starts with a discussion of revolution, proceeds to reflexivity and ends up with the needs to grasp unity-through-diversity to respond to the complexity of the global age.
Hofkirchner, Wolfgang: Emergent Information. A Unified Theory of Information Framework. World Scientific, Singapore, 2013
This book was written to clarify Hofkirchner's approach towards the field of information. After developing positions of an Evolutionary Systems Theory that started with the research project "Human Strategy in Complexity" 2001-2004 and led to Praxio-Onto-Epistemology as Systems Philosophy, the way was paved to formulating corner stones of a Unified Theory of Information. The book itself gives an introduction to complexity and self-organisation as well as information.