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melanie_page's review against another edition
2.0
After reading this a second time, and with, admittedly, a lot more time and energy to put into it, I liked it even less than the first time. Luhmann uses key terms throughout the book that he doesn't define. It's as if we're supposed to know what he means. I assume that he's defined his esoteric terminology in previous books, but he cannot seriously assume that readers have encountered his entire collection of works. Also, some of the key terms he brought up in this book were used repeatedly from the beginning and THEN given his definition in the last few chapters. Basically, mass media is "society" (he's not using society like most people because society doesn't even INCLUDE people) and everything else is the "environment" (nothing to do with trees) outside of the mass media (his theory is that the mass media is a "system," also a term not defined). Things from the environment encounter the system every so often as "irritants" that can either be integrated into the system ("information") or kicked out ("non-information"). There is also quite a bit about observing others, observing self, and observing yourself observing others. Oy....
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