Corona-Culture, second order observations

We are observing the onset of a new culture, which I call the "Corona-Culture". While it is not yet clear about the long term effects, the immediate outcomes of this culture are good to observe, like the spreading of the Corona-virus (John Hopkins CSSE) or the social distancing (The Atlantic). But all data and interpretation from these data has to be seen in there context, an observer can only see what's observable and it's not only about the observation, the presentment of the observation is also an issue. Let's start with the observation of the emerging 'corona-Culture' as data-dissemination. (Science). The article is clearly showing that data alone can't be trusted, this data has to be seen into a context. And although there seems to be a lot of fake-news around (see Politifact for this), people are checking the backgrounds, one example would be that some people set their Tinder to China (buzzfeed) to get to know more about the new Coronoa-Virus. And would you believe that a man deliberately tries to spred the virus (Newsfeed), as two sources report. (The Sun, NHK reports (in Japanese, that this person did recently). But there is more to it, the linguistic display of he facts is not neutral. Have you noticed that all of the above stated sources are inner Circle English countries? (ThoughtCo about this) The problem is that is more diffucult to check facts in another language, especially if the observer is not able to understand the language. So what to do? Confine observations to known languages? That is maybe not entirely possibly. But some case are then very difficult to decide: Have Russian media started a disinformation campaign about the new Corona-virus ? (FT reports in non-open content). But language-competence (in this case reading competence) is not all. Even in the mother tongue, difficult words are hiding. Let's analyze the title for this: "Corona", has different names, the Virus is now called SARS-CoV-2 (Wikipedia {Wp} has more, about it) and here an Identification is not difficult, but there are still a lot things unknown about the Virus and about the disease it is causing (COVID-19, Wp). However, very diffucult is the concept of 'culture', because a lot of people believe to know what 'culture' is and for what contexts this concept is standing for. The Author of this blog does not share this opinion, but nevertheless use 'culture'. And for this reason 'second order observations' are essential. The concept orginated in Cybernetics and was applied to Sociology by Niklas Luhmann (Wikpedia has an article about him). It means to observe an observer, which is not an easy thing to do, because normally simple observations are not visible. But if the observer communicates (preferably writes) this communication becomes open for a follow-up ("anschlussfähig" in German), which is (basically) the second order observation. Therefore second-order observations are also occurring in all-day live communication, but this is not referring to this or Luhmanns intention. The distinctive 'lens' (in Luhmanns terminology "Media-code") between first and second order observations is here and in Luhmanns case the quest for truth and therefore "science". It is difficult to state the whole systems-theory in one blog statement, Niklas Luhmann needed literally dozens of books for the explication of his theory, a good overview gives his magnum opus "Theory of Society" (1998/2012,3). However, the ultimate intention is here one step further: a second order observation of the contemporary culture (the 'Corona-Culture') or in simpler
application to the theory to cultural change. Why? An deeper understanding of the Corona culture would help humanity to appreciate its advantages.                      


References

Luhmann, Niklas (2012/2013), Theory of Society, translated from German "Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft" (1998), by Rhodes Berrett, Stanford UP
see for the topic also: Call for Papers: Corona & Language challenges (Language on the move)