Web-based groups as autopoietic social systems. A cybernetic perspective

Web-based groups can be observed as social systems emerging from computer-mediated communication underpinned by the technological infrastructures of Web 2.0. The usage of social network platforms has been investigated from a wide array of sociological perspectives. Among many others, prominent fields of research concern the practices of presentation of the self, the emergence of social formations, the construction of knowledge, the relationships between technology and business models underpinning social networking platforms and social participation of the users. This article proposes a complementary approach advancing innovative theoretical reflections, in a commitment to answer Fuchs’ plea for new approaches to media systems and media organisation analysis. In particular, this articles discusses web-based groups as the catalyst for theoretical reflections concerning the co-evolution between the digital medium of communication and the societal capacity to handle complexity in the material dimension, temporal dimension, and social dimension. The article builds the foundation of its theoretical innovations in the first part, through an interdisciplinary combination of the theory of forms, second-order cybernetics, and autopoietic system theory. The second part of the article presents the main body of theoretical innovation by introducing web-based systems as a specific type of social group, emerging from the digital medium of communication. The ambition of the article is to offer an opportunity to contextualise sociological research on communication processes supported by social networking platforms within an ontology of web-based groups as social systems that emerge from digital media of communication.