Zusammenfassungen
Rudolf Stichweh
The Multiple Publics of Science: Inclusion and Popularization
The paper conceives the popularization of science as a structural
effect of processes of
inclusion; the universal inclusion of everyone into science being
a consequence of the universality
and openness of modern science. Popular communications are demonstrated
to be
a very elementary phenomenon in science, popularization even being
present when
research results are communicated to a colleague from whom one
separates only the distance
between two disciplinary knowledge systems. Different modes of
popularization (interdisciplinary, pedagogical, political, general)
are explained. It is then demonstrated that
popularization is not a neutral translation of knowledge into a
different linguistic repertoire.
Rather, numerous structural effects on science caused by popularization
are presented.
Finally, an outline of the historical development of popularization
is given. A kind of curvilinear
movement to be observed: popular communications and communication
by amateurs
sometimes dominating the premodern system of science in the eighteenth
century;
then a closure of the system of science in the differentiation
of the classical scientific disciplines
in the nineteenth century; and finally, as a consequence of the
ongoing differentiation
and diversification of science since the early twentieth century,
a situation in which
interdisciplinary contacts and interrelations with nonscientific
publics become more important
and therefrom results a finely graded system of communication types.
Thus the esoteric
style of understandings germane to innerdisciplinary discourse
is only one in such a plurality
of communication forms.
Celia Lury
The Interface of the Brand: Complex Objects and Partial
Solutions
This paper will develop the claim that the brand is a complex
object. It will put forward the
argument that what has come to define the brand in the contemporary
era is the organisation
and functioning of a set of relations between products in time.
It will further be suggested
that the organisation of the brand as an interface for the communication
of information
between producers and consumers. It is the functioning of this
interface, which
introduces possibility into the abstract thing that is the brand
(Massumi 2002). And it is the
introduction of possibility that makes the emergence of the brand
a significant development
in the contemporary economy.
Urs
Stäheli
Financial Noises:
Inclusion and the Promise of Meaning
This paper aims at writing a history of stock market communication
in terms of different
forms of noise. It starts with the observation that in the 19th
century, the popular semantics
of the stock market were fascinated with financial speculation
as noisy phenomenon. The
paper tries to link these observations of noise to processes of
inclusion into speculative
communication. It is argued that noise itself, and not only the
promise of financial profit,
makes financial speculation attractive. Noise becomes a major attraction
of financial speculation
to those who are not yet included: inclusion becomes a process
of dealing and decoding
noise. Thus, noise is not simply seen as disturbance or nuisance,
but rather as a generator
of meaning. The paper explores this question by introducing three
short, historical ›case
studies‹ which exemplify three different ways of how the
noise of the stock exchange
becomes crucial to processes of inclusion.
Niels Werber
German Death Star in
Orbit. Geopolitics and Globality in German Popular Nazi
Novels
The paper raises the question whether popular communication
produces individual forms
of knowledge about globality and the ›global‹. This »globality
of the popular« is a concept
that can be found in German science fiction novels of the 1930s
and 40s which show divergent
forms of the idea of a world society originated in different traditions
of geopolitical
thought. An extreme but also exemplary form of globality designed
by the popular is a German
death star in orbit. This geo- and biopolitical instrument appears
in science fiction
novels which achieved high publication numbers, and these novels
foster a specific form of
globality, whose symbol is this very death star. This text will
sketch a short genealogy of this
fatal fusion of globality and popularity in German literature.
Nicolas Pethes
»Thinking Ahead«.
Fiction as Prediction in Popular Scripts on Political Scenarios
The paper offers an analysis of the growing influence products
of popular culture gain on ›real life‹ political decision making. This influence,
memorably depicted by the almost perfect
simulation of a war in David Mamet’s 1998 movie Wag the Dog,
is based upon specific
skills the entertainment industry applies in creating thrilling
plots and innovative special
effects. The two examples the paper elaborates demonstrate how
these skills can increasingly
be considered skills of political planning.. The main question
is whether this interrelation
is merely an import of techniques or whether popular culture is
indeed able to predict
future scenarios and test the possible reactions to it. In the
first example, the US Army collaborates
with Hollywood scriptwriters and computer game producers at the
Institute for
Creative Technology (USC) to create virtual training situations
that prepare soldiers for new
combat situations. In the second, Tom Clancy’s novel Debt
of Honor (1995) develops a scenario
for a post-cold war international conflict and, in the final scene
of the book, seems to
predict the events of 9 / 11. The paper suggests that the reason
for this ›prophetic‹ ability is
the high speed at which popular culture can make up scenarios for
almost any possible
conflict of the future. At the same time, popular culture uses
clichés and well known topoi
that help to imagine and cope with the shocking catastrophes of
future politics.
Christina Bartz
Subliminal Masses.The
Knowledge of Social Control
Mass media are generally observed with the suspicion that they
influence viewers in their
attitudes and actions. This criticism requires a re-reading that
focuses on the moment of
social control that is expressed within it. Mass media appear in
journalistic and scholarly
discourse not only as a threat for society and the individual,
but also as a control mechanism —at least when one considers the remarks critical of the
media made using Gustave
Le Bons’ model. Le Bons’ theory marks a central reference
point in the observation of
media. But in establishing this reference, one also brings about
an oscillation in the media
debates which is already positioned within mass psychology: the
mass, or crowd, is easy to
influence and therefore can be controlled. But at the same time,
the crowd is unpredictable,
making control of it both necessary and impossible. This contribution
will trace this oscillation
in the description of mass media since the Second World War.
Torsten Hahn
Interferences and Interceptors.
A Case Study of General Suspicion
The paper offers a discussion of a media event that took place
in the Sixties. Central questions
ask how far theoretically elaborated concepts of interference and
parasite (Shannon/
Serres) can be applied to this seemingly trivial and short-lived
incident and what possibilities
to discuss a common interference of communication result from this
application.
First, the role of suspicion in communication processes is defined,
which then leads to a
framing of the problem connected to the concept of ›noise‹ as
dependent on the observer’s
position, or more exactly as a function of time. Due to the conception
of interference as
divalent – i.e. as simultaneously destructive and a constructive – the
emergence of a communication
system based on the interference’s variety results from the
interruption of an
›official‹ routine of communication. This leads to
the questions of who ultimately decides
what is information and what is noise, and to which position in
the diagram of communication
this distinction can be attached, i.e. also in how far interference
and noise cannot be
localized in a clear manner. A message system originates from the
elimination of interference
of the communication channel. This message system institutionalizes
the interference
in the sense of suppressing communication – and that makes
its functions of eliminating
and branching off information (Serres) habitual. Thus, a different
model of communication
replaces the one of ›noisy communication‹: paradoxically
one that marks a certain mode of
interference as a basal element of the communication process and
that shows the necessity
of extending the twofold sender / receiver model to a routine that
implies the position of the
third.
Rembert
Hüser
The Best Year of
Our Lives: The 74th Annual Academy Awards Ceremony
In popular communication, ›film‹ is supposed to represent
the global. This idea is staged
each year anew at one of the most widely watched entertainment
events on global television:
the Annual Award(s) Ceremony of the Academy of Motion Arts. On
March 24, 2002,
the first Award Ceremony after September 11, 2001 had a problem.
On the one hand it was
supposed to play its part in the formation of the national home
front. On the other hand
the ceremony had to do (global) business as usual and to celebrate
the products of an
indigenous film industry as the outstanding examples of an universal
language of images.
To bridge this gap, the ceremony tells its own story as a success
story of the integration of
outsiders and ties it together with the famous image of a US postwar
movie of 1946: the
display of the home-coming war veteran’s artificial arm in
the front yard of his house.
Georg Stanitzek
»The plastic people will hear nothing but
a noice.« Paratexts in Hollywood,The Beatles, Rolf Dieter
Brinkmann, et al.
Communication theory usually conceives of noise in terms of »undesirable
uncertainty (or,
information) vs. desirable uncertainty«. While discussing
the question of »popular noise«,
this article points to some distinctions which originate in the
tradition of hermeneutics and
could be understood as predecessors of that disjunction: »Sensus
multiplex vs. sensus simplex
«, »high vs. low«, and »esoteric vs. exoteric«.
Furthermore, the title sequence is given as
an example of a popular paratext that aims at an integration of
the different perspectives
which are indicated by those distinctions.
Heinz Messmer
Form and Coding of the Social Conflict
The present analyses follow the proposition, that causes and
environments of social conflicts
are quite different with conflict itself – despite the
fact that they are frequently mixed.
Contrary to the assumptions of traditional theories conflict
indicates a highly indigenous
social form. The internal structures of this form could be observed
and reconstructed differently
based on the ongoing communications. Conflict does not simply exists
but has to be
done. Despite of the principle unlimited possibilities of its constitution,
the processes of
orderly structure building are highly restricted. In the course
of its completion as system,
conflict is proceeded within four different forms which make part
of a comprehensive esca-
lation process and that are structurally rooted in the conditions
of opposing sense-selections.
Franz Hoegl
Black Box Beetle: About »Privatheit« and
Intransparancy
Wittgenstein has criticized the philosophical concept of »Privatheit« in
his Philosophical
Investigations from the perspective of the philosophy of language.
In Luhmann’s systems
theory »intransparency«, that is, the problem that
one has no access to the mind of someone
else, seems to be analogous to »Privatheit«. Do the
epistemological problems (of solipsim
and semantical scepticism) implicated by the privatist concept
therefore return in systems
theory? In my opinion, Luhmann addressed these problems by introducing
the notion
of »double contingency« in the communication. On the
basis of a systematic comparison
between the two terms »Privatheit« and »intransparency«,
I argue that the model of »double
contingency« is not necessarily bound to the concept of »Privatheit«.
The systems-theoretical
construction of double contingency even provides a way to formulate
Wittgenstein’s
argumentation against privatist scepticism without reference to
the postulation of an integrative
function of ordinary language.
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