Butterflies make the news go-round

In health, social care and the news media at large there are themes that recur. While every summer has its silly season, there is a strange irregular-regularity in the way the light is re-cast on issues important to us all. It may be triggered due to a tragic incident involving a child, older person, or a whole family. At other times the stimulus for further exposure and prompt for debate is found when different coloured papers have their political say. The political opposition can force or be forced into a reaction.

Chaos is hardly a new kid in town, but there are many groups such as Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences who are trying to understand and apply this infant science to specific disciplines and even conjoin and create new ones. I mention chaos due the question of migration.

Where do the various items of news head to when they disappear off the media's smörgåsbord?

Maybe they are still there, they just merge into the background noise? This movement is not just a binary, metronomic tick-tock, in and out of the media's eyes. It's more complex than that.

Like the butterflies beloved of chaoticists everywhen, perhaps these issues travel an unpredictable and yet inevitable course through the four fold space of Hodges' model? They travel together and yet in separate lanes, like the horses racing at an amusement arcade. When one reaches the socio-cultural-political boundary, that is when things happen and the volume is ramped up.

Events may frequently have their origin in the intrapersonal domain (it takes a person to find a tango partner), but one way or another - either heading south through the social domain or east and south through the sciences domain - news worthy items will and do repeat themselves.

Original image source: http://10outof10.blogspot.com/2008/04/lorenz-father-of-chaos-theory-died-at.html