著者

名部 圭一

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

桃山学院大学総合研究所紀要 (ISSN:1346048X)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.43, no.3, pp.1-14, 2018-03

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The aim of this paper is to analyze "affective society" in the post-truth age from the perspectiveof social system theory as elaborated by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. According to thistheory, modern society is a functionally differentiated society to a high degree, where symbolicallygeneralized media of communication such as money, power, truth and love have developedand each functional system observes the other functional systems or its environment throughbinary codes such as true/ false (the system of science), legal / illegal (the legal system), andpayment /non-payment (the economic system).In his later life Luhmann analyzed mass media in terms of social system theory and insistedthat the binary code of the system of mass media is information/non-information, which enablesthe system to select new information from its environment. New information selected in thissystem, however, is severely limited; it must be true. Then, what is the binary code of the systemof the internet? We propose that it is connection/ disconnection. Compared with the system ofmass media, for the system of internet it is more critical how communication is connected to nextcommunication, for disconnection of communication means the death of the system itself. On theother hand, it is less important whether information is true or not than in the system of massmedia. This is why false or fake information is easy to circulate in the system of the internet. Badinformation drives out good―Gresham's Law in the post-truth age.