About

Systems theory, psychology and social media      

Fall semester 2025-26, Panteion University, Dept. of Psychology

 Course room, Δ12 (D12), 4th floor, 13:00 – 15:00

Short description: We live in a networked reality. Nowadays, the networked teens develop and maintain complex webs of relationships and organizations through their touchscreens. Social media and popular networking sites, like Facebook and Instagram, claim to provide an effective way to bring people together in meaningful communities. In this context, as our world becomes ever more phygital interconnected, one of the key competencies for the modern psychologist, educator, health practitioner, or social scientist is to become more system-literate. This course offers the theoretical underpinnings and the practical tools needed to apply systemic knowledge to scientific exploration and professional development. How can we take advantage of social media to promote a systems view of life? Through this course, students will engage in experiential (learning by doing) blended learning activities to develop a learning organization, a knowledge community with emergent properties. A learning organization is considered to be a dynamic living system capable of evolving and producing new knowledge. In this approach, learning for systems becomes a transformative experience that nurtures meaningful connections among the participating students (as meaning emerges from co-action) and develops an empowering web of relations.

Topics covered

  • Introduction to systems thinking
  • Systems and change
  • Social media: a systems view
  • Human systems and technology
  • Rhizomes: social formations in the becoming
  • Entropy, negentropy, and anotropy
  • Self-organization and emergence
  • Order out of chaos
  • Technological singularity and omega point
  • Far from the equilibrium dynamics and human crises
  • Complexity and psychology
  • Anthropocene, Robotocene, and artificial intelligence
  • Anotropy, resilience, and empowerment on technosocial systems.

Evaluation: The course evaluation is based on a combination of weekly activities (blog posts) and a short final essay, or a multimodal digital artifact.

2025 update: The class meetings take place with physical presence every Thursday, 13:00-15:00 in room Δ12(D12). This room is located on the 4th floor of the New Building, just above the Erasmus office. Starting date: Oct 9th, 2025

Contact: Dr. Alexios Brailas

Resources

Books (Free to download from Panteion library network)

  1. Book [73265952]: Principles of Systems Science [electronic resource]. HEAL-Link Springer ebooks. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-1-4939-1920-8
  2. Book [73226777]: A Legacy for Living Systems: Gregory Bateson as Precursor to Biosemiotics [electronic resource]. HEAL-Link Springer ebooks. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-6706-8
  3. Book [73268686]: From Complexity to Creativity: Explorations in Evolutionary, Autopoietic, and Cognitive Dynamics. HEAL-Link Springer ebooks. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2Fb102389
  4. Book [73232649]: Community-Based Participatory Research for Improved Mental Healthcare [electronic resource]. HEAL-Link Springer ebooks. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4614-5517-2
  5. Book [73236605]: Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science. [electronic resource]. HEAL-Link Springer ebooks. https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007%2F978-0-387-30440-3
  6. Book [75488702]: Mass collaboration and education. [electronic resource]. HEAL-Link Springer ebooks. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-13536-6
  7. Book [75489838]: Non-Equilibrium Social Science and Policy. [electronic resource]. HEAL-Link Springer ebooks. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-42424-8