Acquisition of new communication media and social (dis)connectivity

Abstract

The article discusses the relation between communication media and social (dis)connectivity. The question is how communication media provide society with different possibilities for (dis)connectivity in different historical media societies. The article draws on Luhmann’s sociocybernetics theories of social systems and communication media in combination with media theory (especially Meyrowitz). As a starting point, the acquisition of oral language made communicative connections and thereby society possible. Later the written media, print media and analogue electronic media opened up new possibilities for social systems to develop structures with new forms of communicative connections. Even though society is only possible because of communication media, which offer new ways of forming new structures that provide new connection possibilities, a new communication medium, especially in the beginning, causes problems and disconnectivity. After the introduction of the printing press in Europe, a great interpretation disagreement broke out and wars raged across the continent for the next centuries. Later with the invention of radio and film, dictators, especially Hitler, benefited from the new media situation. In the final section, the article analyses if we also in the present-day society with the acquisition of digital media see signs of new disconnectivity, and it discusses if we in the new medium society, like in the former, will experience permanent societal disconnectivity going hand in hand with new forms of connectivity.