ISA RC51 on Sociocybernetics

Volume 20 No. 1 (2025) includes the following paper:

Anthropocene in a Media Perspective. Jesper TÆKKE

You can grab the open access full papers following this link.

Dear all,

Thank you for your support over the years and for your continued commitment to the Journal of Sociocybernetics. Your contributions, whether as authors, reviewers, or readers, have been invaluable in shaping the journal, and we appreciate your ongoing engagement.

After consultation within the RC51 board and discussions with the head of an external academic publisher, we have decided to implement some changes to the journal in 2025.

First, the journal will now operate under a continuous publication model. This means that instead of waiting for a full issue to be compiled, accepted articles will be published immediately upon completion of the peer-review process. This change will allow research to be disseminated more quickly and efficiently.

Additionally, we have decided to switch to a single-blind peer review process. This means that while reviewers will remain anonymous to authors, reviewers will now be able to see the identities of the authors. The primary reason for this change is to allow members of the journal’s editorial team—who were not able to act as reviewers under the previous system—to participate in the review process. This will significantly speed up review times while maintaining rigorous academic standards.

We believe these changes will improve the journal’s efficiency and impact, and we look forward to your continued contributions.

Best regards,
Andrew Mitchell
Editor, Journal of Sociocybernetics

A new issue of the Journal of Sociocybernetics is now out! Volume 14 (2016) includes the following papers:

Is external control important for internal control?. Evo BUSSENIERS
Political legitimacy in Japan: a Luhmannian perspective. Andrew MITCHELL
Bildung in the Era of Digital Media. Jesper TÆKKE and Michael Eric PAULSEN

You can grab the open access full papers following this link.

Special Issue of Zaragoza 13th Conference of Sociocybernetics.

First part of the special issue with selected papers from 13th Conference of Sociocybernetics “Sociocybernetics Facing Turbulent Times: Media, Politics and Societies”.

The special issue is guest-edited by Toru TAKAHASHI.

Find it following this link.

Featuring three original scientific papers (and a new layout), a new issue of the Journal of Sociocybernetics is not out. The journal is licensed under creative commons and it’s open access.

Feel free to download and read the papers:

Volume 13 (2), with the first chunk of the proceedings from Zaragoza conference, is also ready. Expect it to be out in the news few weeks.

We are pleased to announce that the Vol. 12 (2014) of JOURNAL  OF SOCIOCYBERNETICS is out.

You can view it here: http://papiro.unizar.es/ojs/index.php/rc51-jos/index (please note the new sever-address)

The present issue of the JOURNAL OF SOCIOCYBERNETICS is the last edition under the  responsibility of Michael Paetau from the “Center for Sociocybernetics” Studies (http://www.socio- cybernetics.eu). In January 2015, the quite recently elected board of the ISA-Research Committee 51 will take up its work and Fabio Giglietto, Professor at the Department of Communication and Human Studies of the University of Urbino “Carlo Bo” (http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/fabio-giglietto/) and research fellow of the “Center for Sociocybernetics” Studies (http://www.socio- cybernetics.eu), will commence as the new journal editor. During the last four years Fabio Giglietto, already was a member of the editorial board of our Journal. We wish him and the new board continued success and all the best for the upcoming period.

The current edition includes articles applying several theoretical aspects of complexity analysis on different empirical cases. In their article “Reflections on the Complexity of Ancient Social Heterarchies: Toward New Models of Social Self-Organization in Pre-Hispanic Colombia” Nathalie Mezza-Garcia, Tom Froese and Nelson Fernández face the limitations which hierarchical and centrally controlled systems have in their information processes with respect to manage large-scale crisis and challenges. With reference to historical examples in pre-Hispanic Colombia, specifically the cultures of the Zenú, the Muiscas and the Tayronas, the authors propose that creating and analyzing computer models of their heterarchically and decentralized processes of management could provide a broader perspective on the possibilities of self-organized political systems.

In his article “The Paradox of Social Ties after the ICT Revolution: A Second-Order Observation” Saburo Akahori explores what kinds of distinctions are used when the change of social systems is observed. His analysis refers on the question of significance of social ties in Japan, which has repeatedly been emphasized in recent years. One example is the frequency of use of the Japanese word kizuna which means bond. It sounds odd be- cause conventionally kizuna indicates intimate, continuous relationships, not temporary relationships. Even though the word kizuna means strong ties, now it also implies weak ties. Here the author asks for the reason why the strange usage of the word kizuna has become acceptable.

Patricia E. Almaguer-Kalixto, José A. Amozurrutia, Chaime Marcuello Servós present in their paper “Policy Processes as Complex Systems: The case of Mesoamerican Sus- tainable Development Initiative” a research methodology for analyzing policy processes that are defined at the global level but implemented locally. The interrelations between these two levels pose great conceptual challenges in explaining the changes, transformations and continuations occurring in this complex process based on empirical information. Understanding the policy process as a complex system, the paper proposes analyzing macro, meso and micro levels as subsystems of the total process, identifying the interrelations between policy action, actors and discourses. The paper
takes the example of the Mesoamerican Sustainable Development Initiative (MSDI) of the Puebla Panama Plan (PPP), a regional integration plan for a new ‘Mesoamerica’ that originally included the seven Central American countries and the southern states of Mexico.

In her paper “Sustainable Technology Assessment and Sustainable Scenarios of Techno Social Phenomena” Michiko Amemiya-Ramírez desribes sustainable technology as a technological subsystem with marginal or no negative impacts on other technological systems, as well as the environment, the society and the economy. To identify such technologies it is necessary to describe their behavior and their present and future interactions with those systems. Due to social dynamics, a complete assessment to identify sustainable technologies requires a hard systems analysis and a soft system analysis. A hard system analysis is useful to assess the interactions, behavior and characteristics of the technology quantitatively. A soft system analysis is convenient to describe other characteristics and interactions through qualitative and non measurable characteristics.

For further issues of the JOURNAL OF SOCIOCYBERNETICS (the peer-reviewed open access journal of RC51 on Sociocybernetics), we invite scholars who have their background in the field of systems theory, sociocybernetics, information & communication science and who apply this for studying various social phenomena regarding their complexity and dynamics, to submit articles for publication in the JOURNAL OF SOCIOCYBERNETICS. For submitting articles authors need to register with the journal prior to submitting. People who want to register have the option to register as a reader or as an author. Every reader or author can register by themselves using the journal’s web- site. After clicking the register item they will be guided through the registration process. After registration they will be able to login by username and password and then authors may submit their papers. The system will immediately confirm the submission and will automatically trigger the review process. Authors will get an email with a URL that will enable them to track its progress through the editorial process once they are logged in. We recommend to review the “About the Journal” page for the journal’s policies, as well as the “Author Guidelines“.