Gregory Bateson’s cybernetic approach has not been widely applied and developed in communication studies in Indonesia. Therefore, articles that focus on bringing this kind of cybernetic approach to the fore are very important. Through a study of the literature, this article reviews the information processing model of Gregory Bateson by taking a cybernetic approach based on general systems theory with causal premises. Systems theory and cybernetic perspectives are often used in the analysis of communication and information phenomena to see the extent to which changes in the components of a system have an impact on the system as a whole. Further, This article also reviews the relationship between the principles in the cybernetic approach and several popular theories such as symbolic interactionism, social phenomenology, and chaos theory. The relation between cybernetics and symbolic interactionism lies in the discussion of context and the concept of redundancy, which in symbolic interactionism is referred to as a reserve of knowledge or a reserve of meaning. The cybernetic approach corresponds to phenomenology when phenomenology describes patterns of human action that are explained through the concepts of typification and representation. Reciprocity, which is one of the important concepts in social phenomenology, also has a deep interplay with feedback mechanisms in cybernetics. Finally, the general principles of the cybernetic approach are also found in chaos theory or social phenomenology, and chaos theory, both of which assume that communication phenomena and/or natural phenomena are part of a larger system that are connected to one another. Both cybernetics and chaos theory rely on causal mechanisms to explain how communication processes or the universe in general works.
Keyword(s): Cybernetics, System Theory, Symbolic Interactionism, Phenomenology, Chaos Theory