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Andrew Painter, From Incomplete Nature to Incomplete Society: Sense, Absence, and Mass Media Communications , International Society for Biosemiotic Studies (ISBS), 2021.07, Inspired by Deacon’s claim that biologists need to change their view of complex living systems to include “specific absences”with real effects, this essay analyzes how Japanese TV is structured and constrained by ententional factors at a variety of levels. From helping to explain everyday work practices observed inside a major Osaka television station (for example, how TV producers avoid being caught on camera at all costs) to framing deeper systemic questions (how TV creates a quasi-intimacy with its amorphous viewers) the absential perspective is both flexible and productive. At the same time, a wider socio-theoretical framework is needed to more fully conceptualize the complex operations and functions of the mass media today. Here, Niklas Luhmann’s pioneering writings on the functional differentiation of social systems, and especially his ideas about the mass media as the sine qua non of modern culture and communication, can help us begin to build such a model. While there are significant differences between biosemiotic and Luhmannian approaches to conceptualizing signs and meaning in complex systems, I believe that Deacon’s focus on an incomplete nature and Luhmann’s insistence on an incomplete society (incomplete in that it can never match the complexity of its own environment) together open up new spaces for observing and understanding our dynamic, evolving world. . |
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Andrew A. Painter, “Rethinking Television and Culture.”, American Anthropological Association, 1991.12. |
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Andrew A. Painter, “Media, Communication, and Intercultural Understanding.”, Kyushu University Dept. of Languages and Cultures Open Lecture Series., 2017.06. |
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Andrew A. Painter, “Culture, Consensus, and Japanese Television: An Ethnographic Approach.”, American Anthropological Association, 1990.12. |
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Andrew Painter, “Afternoon Television and Japanese Culture.” , Toho Gakkai, 1989.04. |
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Andrew A. Painter, The Production of Japanese Television and Culture., University of Washington Open Seminar, 1991.10. |
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Andrew Allen Painter, Notes on the Study of Communication and New Media, Kyushu University Debate Society, 2016.02, This talk presented a history of communication studies and new approaches to media studies based on the authors own original research on electronic media. . |