This special issue invites a reflection on and reformulation of options for social construction as a theoretical and practical approach to studying communication as continuously emergent in relationships, constitutive of social reality, consequential to communicators, experienced through the bodily senses, and afforded by their material circumstances. Authors are encouraged to take stock of our predicted and actual accomplishments, consider the tensions between the promised and actualized changes brought about by social construction work in communication, and project the impact of social construction on the discipline in the next five to ten years. The focus is not only critical, but reflexive: How do we wish to reconstruct social construction? Relevance: The articles in the journal critically address social construction, taking on issues of its possibilities, shortcomings, and practical applications in psychotherapy, communication, and medicine.

The blogosphere supports an interpersonal meaning production process by providing the space and opportunities for communication through the circulation and discussion of topics. I explore how garden bloggers issue invitations to communicate by studying their selection process from all possible entries and images. I examine the selection criteria for posting an entry and especially look at Swedish and German garden blogs to study “ordinary” people’s relations in the blogosphere from the perspective of sharing opinions, impressions, and emotions about their garden environment. As a result, the selection criteria of novelty, values, identification, conflicts, visuality, and sociality are revealed. A communicative culture of approval, admiration, and respect, which promotes emotional ties and strengthens the feeling of common concerns in the blogosphere, is noticeably present. Relevance: This article draws on systems theory as developed by Niklas Luhmann.

Key words: domestic blogs, communication, systems theory, gardening

It is argued that the difference in the rhetoric used by Russian presidents in their annual addresses and American presidents in their inauguration speeches reflects the difference between the Russian and American societies viewed as living systems in the theoretical framework of the biology of cognition. Relevance: The biology of cognition principles are applied in analyzing rhetoric as a reflection of orientational values in different societies as living systems.

Excerpt: The text network analysis methodology Dmitry Paranyushkin applies in his comparative analysis of Medvedev’s and Putin’s annual addresses to the Federal Assembly is an interesting attempt to identify and visualize a conceptual network that lies at the basis of a particular text, such as a presidential address in this case. Because the human brain thinks in language (Maturana, Mpodozis, & Letelier, 1995), this methodology, with its concept of “betweenness centrality” as a measure used to identify the keywords (which are not necessarily the most frequent words), may help to better understand the ways we think – including Russian (or American) president.

Following the theme of an earlier discussion in the Russian Journal of Communication, the paper offers an alternative to the traditional approach to linguistic change based on the “living organism” metaphor. This metaphor is shown to be inadequate, and massive linguistic change is viewed in the framework of the biology of cognition as an ecological phenomenon, affecting both society and individuals as third-order and second-order living-systems. The driving force behind the changes occurring in Russian, it is suggested, is ecological in nature and consists in mingling semiotic values that serve as points of orientation in two different third-order living-systems with their specific cultures. As a result, one might speak of orientation to a different culture with a different system of values, along with rejection of traditional values, including the value of the Russian language. Relevance: Linguistic change is viewed in the framework of the biology of cognition

Contrasting the ontological view of scientific inquiry with an epistemological view drawn from cybernetics yields a dynamic conception of communication that joins observers with what they observe.