No More Learning

? Cultural
Memory
in ^Present
^^dtig^^yg
Mieke Bal and Hent de Vries, Editors
? The Reality of the Mass Media
Niklas Luhmann
Translated by Kathleen Cross
Stanford University Press Stanford, California
? Stanford University Press Stanford, California
(C) 1996 Westdeutscher Verlag
This translation (C) Polity Press, 2 0 0 0
First published in German as Die Realitat der Massenmedien, Verlag, 1996 (second, enlarged edition)
Originating publishers of the English edition:
Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Westdeutscher
First published in the U. S. A. by Stanford University Press, 2000
Printed in Great Britain
Cloth ISBN 0-8047-4076-3 Paper ISBN 0-8047-4077-1
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress This book is printed on acid-free paper.
? Foreword vi
1 Differentiation as a Doubling of Reality 1
2 Self-reference and Other-reference 10
3 Coding 15
4 System-specific Universalism
5 News and In-depth Reporting 25
6 Ricupero 42
7 Advertising 44
8 Entertainment 51
9 Unity and Structural Couplings 63
10 Individuals 71
11 The Construction of Reality 76
12 The Reality of Construction 88
13 The Function of the Mass Media 95
14 The Public 103
15 Schema Formation 107
16 Second-order Cybernetics as Paradox 117
Notes 123 Index 151
2 3
Foreword
? The text published here is based on a lecture of the same title which I delivered at the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences in Diisseldorf on 13 July 1994. A full version of the lecture has been published in the Academy's lecture series. 1
At the suggestion of the publisher I have expanded this text con- siderably. In particular, I have included a number of points which go beyond the comparatively limited framework of 'communica- tion studies' media research. Nonetheless, the approach to the prob- lem and the statements contained in the text of the lecture have been retained. It therefore seemed appropriate to describe the present text as a 'second edition', even though the additions go far beyond simply bringing the text up to date in view of the literature that has since appeared.
? Differentiation SS 2i Doubling of Reality
Whatever we know about our society, or indeed about the world in which we live, we know through the mass media. 1 This is true not only of our knowledge of society and history but also of our knowl- edge of nature. What we know about the stratosphere is the same as what Plato knows about Atlantis: we've heard tell of it. Or, as Horatio puts it: 'So have I heard, and do in part believe it. '2 On the other hand, we know so much about the mass media that we are not able to trust these sources. Our way of dealing with this is to suspect that there is manipulation at work, and yet no consequences of any im- port ensue because knowledge acquired from the mass media merges together as if of its own accord into a self-reinforcing structure. Even if all knowledge were to carry a warning that it was open to doubt, it would still have to be used as a foundation, as a starting point. Unlike in the gothic novels of the eighteenth century, the solution to the problem cannot be found in someone secretly pulling strings be- hind the scenes, however much even sociologists themselves would
like to believe this to be the case. What we are dealing with - and this is the theory to be elaborated in what follows - is an effect of the functional differentiation of modern society. This effect can be com- prehended, it can be the subject of theoretical reflection. But we are not talking about a mystery that would be solved once it is made known. Rather, one could say that modern society has an 'Eigenvalue' or an 'Eigenbehaviour'3 - in other words, recursively stabilized func- tional mechanisms, which remain stable even when their genesis and their mode of functioning have been revealed.
? In what follows, the term 'mass media' includes all those institu- tions of society which make use of copying technologies to dissemi- nate communication. This means principally books, magazines and newspapers manufactured by the printing press, but also all kinds of photographic or electronic copying procedures, provided that they generate large quantities of products whose target groups are as yet undetermined. Also included in the term is the dissemination of communication via broadcasting, provided that it is generally accessible and does not merely serve to maintain a telephone con- nection between individual participants. The mass production of manuscripts from dictation, as in medieval writing rooms, does not qualify for inclusion, nor does the public accessibility of the room in which the communication takes place - in other words, not public lectures, theatrical productions, exhibitions, or concerts, though the term does include the circulation of such performances via film or diskette. This delimitation may appear somewhat arbi- trary, but the basic idea is that it is the mechanical manufacture of a product as the bearer of communication - but not writing itself - which has led to the differentiation of a particular system of the mass media. Thus, the technology of dissemination plays the same kind of role as that played by the medium of money in the differen- tiation of the economy: it merely constitutes a medium which makes formations of forms possible. These formations in turn, unlike the medium itself, constitute the communicative operations which en- able the differentiation and operational closure of the system.
The crucial point at any rate is that no interaction among those co-present can take place between sender and receivers. Interaction is ruled out by the interposition of technology, and this has far- reaching consequences which define for us the concept of mass media. Exceptions are possible (though never with all participants); however, they come across as staged and are indeed handled as such in broadcasting studios. They do not alter in the slightest the technologically conditioned necessity for interruption of contact. The interruption of direct contact, on the one hand, ensures high levels of freedom of communication. A surplus of possibilities for communication thus arises which can only be regulated within the system, by means of self-organization and the system's own con- structions of reality. On the other hand, two selecting factors are at
? work: the extent of willingness to transmit and the amount of in- terest in tuning in, which cannot be coordinated centrally. The organizations which produce mass media communication are de- pendent upon assumptions concerning acceptability. 4 This leads not only to the standardization but also to the differentiation of their programmes, or at any rate to a standardization not tailored to individuals. This, however, is precisely how individual participants have the chance to get what they want, or what they believe they need to know in their own milieu (for example, as politicians or teachers), from the range of programmes on offer. The mode of operation of the mass media is thus subject to external structural conditions which place limits on what they are able to realize.
We can speak of the reality of the mass media in a dual sense. Our title is intended to mark this dual meaning and is therefore to be understood as ambivalent. The unity of this twofold meaning is the point which is to be elaborated in the following discussion.
The reality of the mass media, their real reality, as we might say, consists in their own operations. Things are printed and broadcast. Things are read. Programmes are received. Numerous communica- tions involving preparation and subsequent discussion closely sur- round this activity. However, the process of dissemination is only possible on the basis of technologies. The way in which these tech- nologies work structures and limits what is possible as mass com- munication. This has to be taken into account in any theory of the mass media. Nonetheless, we do not want to regard the work of these machines, nor indeed their mechanical or electronic internal workings, as an operation within the system of the mass media. Not everything which is a condition of possibility of systems op- erations can be a part of the operational sequences of the system itself. (This is also true, of course, of living beings and indeed of any autopoietic system. ) It makes good sense, therefore, to regard the real reality of the mass media as the communications which go on within and through them. We have no doubt that such commu- nications do in fact take place (even though, from an epistemologi- cal point of view, all statements, including these, are the statements of an observer and to this extent have their own reality in the op- erations of the observer).
Whereas we exclude - notwithstanding their importance - tech-
? nical apparatuses, the 'materialities of communication',5 from the operation of communicating because they are not what is being uttered, we do include reception (be it comprehending or mis-com- prehending). Communication only comes about when someone watches, listens, reads - and understands to the extent that further communication could follow on. The mere act of uttering some- thing, then, does not, in and of itself, constitute communication. On the other hand, it is difficult in the case of the mass media (in contrast to interaction that occurs among those co-present) to determine the target group involved in each instance. To a large extent, therefore, obvious presence has to be substituted by assump- tions. This is especially true if the process of turning comprehension/ mis-comprehension into further communication within or outside the system of the mass media is also to be taken into account. How- ever, this gap in competence does have the advantage that recursive loops do not get drawn too tightly, that communication does not immediately become blocked by failures and contradictions, and that, instead, it is able to seek out a willing audience and to experi- ment with possibilities.
These conceptual outlines refer to the operations that actually occur by which the system reproduces itself and its difference to the environment. However, we can speak of the reality of the mass media in another sense, that is, in the sense of what appears to them, or through them to others, to be reality. Put in Kantian terms: the mass media generate a transcendental illusion. According to this understanding, the activity of the mass media is regarded not simply as a sequence of operations, but rather as a sequence of observations or, to be more precise, of observing operations. In order to come to this understanding of the mass media, then, we have to observe their observing. For the approach introduced first above, first-order observation is sufficient, as if we were dealing with facts. For the second approach, it is necessary to adopt the attitude of a second-order observer, an observer of observers. 6
In order to hold on to this distinction, we can speak (always with reference to an observer) of a first reality and of a second (or ob- served) reality. What we now observe is a doubling of reality which takes place in the observed system of the mass media. It does in- deed communicate - about something. About something else or
? about itself. What we have, therefore, is a system which is capable of distinguishing between self-reference and other-reference (Fremdreferenz). Within the terms of a classical discourse of truth as well as of ordinary, everyday understandings of truth, it would be interesting at this point to know whether that which the media report is true or not true; or if it is half true and half not true be- cause it is being 'manipulated'. But how are we to tell? This may be possible in isolated cases for one or another observer and in par- ticular for the systems being reported on; but for the mass daily flow of communications it is, of course, impossible. This issue will be kept firmly outside the discussion that follows. We shall stick to our starting point, namely, that the mass media, as observing sys- tems, are forced to distinguish between self-reference and other- reference. They cannot do otherwise. They cannot simply consider themselves to be the truth - and therein lies a sufficient guarantee for the time being. As a result, they must construct reality - an- other reality, different from their own.
This may at first seem completely trivial. It would not even be worth mentioning, if this kind of 'constructivism' were not a topic of heated debate at the level of epistemology and even for the mass media themselves. 7 However, if all knowledge must be acquired on the basis of a distinction between self-reference and other-refer- ence, it is also the case that all knowledge (and therefore all reality) is a construction. For this distinction between self-reference and other-reference cannot exist in the system's environment (what would be 'self' here, and what would be 'other'? ), but rather only within the system itself.
We therefore opt for operational constructivism, not only here but also in the realm of epistemology. 8 Constructivist theories main- tain that cognitive systems are not in a position to distinguish be- tween the conditions of existence of real objects and the conditions of their own knowledge because they have no access to such real objects other than through knowledge. It is certainly the case that this defect can be corrected at the level of second-order observa- tion, the observation of cognitive operations of other systems. In that instance, it is possible to see how their (other systems') frames shape their knowledge. However, this merely leads to a recurrence of the problem at the level of second-order observation. Even ob-
? servers of other observers cannot distinguish the conditions of ex- istence of these latter observers from the conditions of knowing that what they are dealing with are particular, self-conditioning observers.
Even given the divergence between first-order and second-order observation, this distinction does not remove the basic premise of constructivism but rather confirms it by referring back to itself, that is, 'autologically'. Regardless of how cognition reflects upon itself, the primary reality lies not in 'the world out there', but rather in the cognitive operations themselves,9 because the latter are only possible under two conditions, namely, that they form a self- reproducing system and that this system can only observe by dis- tinguishing between self-reference and other-reference. These conditions are to be thought of as empirical (not as transcen- dental). This also means they can only be fulfilled on the basis of numerous other assumptions which cannot be guaranteed through the system itself. Operational constructivism has no doubt that an environment exists. If it did, of course, the concept of the system's boundary, which presupposes that there is another side, would make no sense either. The theory of operational constructivism does not lead to a 'loss of world', it does not deny that reality exists. How- ever, it assumes that the world is not an object but is rather a horizon, in the phenomenological sense. It is, in other words, in- accessible. And that is why there is no possibility other than to construct reality and perhaps to observe observers as they construct reality. Granted, it may be the case that different observers then have the impression that they are seeing 'the same thing' and that theorists of transcendentalism are only able to explain this through the construction of transcendental a prioris - this invisible hand which keeps knowledge in order in spite of individuality. But in fact this too is a construction, because it is simply not possible with- out the respective system-specific distinction between self-reference and other-reference.
What is meant by 'reality' can therefore only be an internal cor- relate of the system's operations - and not, say, a characteristic which attaches to objects of knowledge additionally to that which distinguishes them in terms of individuality or kind. Reality, then, is nothing more than an indicator of successful tests for consistency
? in the system. Reality is produced within the system by means of sense-making. It arises whenever inconsistencies which might emerge from the part played by memory in the system's operations are resolved - for example, by the construction of space and time as dimensions with various points at which different perceptions or memories can be localized without conflicting with one another. If reality is expressly emphasized in the communication (a 'real' lemon, a 'real' experience), then what is simultaneously emphasized is that doubts are possible and perhaps even appropriate. The more com- plex the system becomes and the more it exposes itself to irrita- tions, the more variety the world can permit without relinquishing any reality - and the more the system can afford to work with negations, with fictions, with 'merely analytical' or statistical as- sumptions which distance it from the world as it is.
In this case, however, every statement about reality is tied to system references which cannot be further generalized (transcendentalized). So our question now has the form: how do mass media construct reality? Or, to put it in a more complicated way (and related to one's own self-reference! ): how can we (as so- ciologists, for example) describe the reality of their construction of reality? The question is not: how do the mass media distort reality through the manner of their representations? For that would pre- suppose an ontological, available, objectively accessible reality that can be known without resort to construction; it would basically presuppose the old cosmos of essences. Scientists might indeed be of the opinion that they have a better knowledge of reality than the way it is represented in the mass media, committed as these are to 'popularization'. But that can only mean comparing one's own con- struction to another. One may do that, encouraged by a society which believes scientific descriptions to be authentic knowledge of reality. But this has no bearing whatever on the possibility of first asking: how do mass media construct reality?
Media research in communication studies faces a similar ques- tion when it describes the increasing influence of the mass media on social events over the past few decades. 10 What ought to be taken, by their own standards, as success is restylized as a crisis. But the description as crisis would presuppose that it is possible to react by changing structures. Such a possibility does not seem likely,
? however. The crisis does not concern the way the mass media oper- ate, only their self-description, the lack of an adequate reflexive theory. In order to respond to this challenge, it will not simply be a matter of starting from the assumption of an increase in influence over the past few decades - much as it is conspicuous, for example, that companies no longer refer to society via their product alone but also, as with mass media suggestion, via 'culture' and 'ethics'. Even the invention of the rotary printing press is not the decisive caesura, but only one step in the process of intensification of ef- fects. Observation and critique of mass media effects had already become commonplace long before. 11 What is needed is a broader period of historical observation, basically reaching back to when the printing press came into its own; and what is needed above all are theoretical tools which are abstract enough to make a place for the theory of the mass media within a general theory of modern society. In what follows this occurs by way of the assumption that the mass media are one of the function systems of modern society, which, like all others, owes its increased effectiveness to the differ- entiation, operational closure and autopoietic autonomy of the sys- tem concerned.
Moreover, the dual meaning of reality both as an operation that actually occurs, that is, is observable, and as the reality of society and its world which is generated in this way, makes it clear that the concepts of operational closure, autonomy and construction by no means rule out causal influences from outside. Especially if it has to be assumed that what one is dealing with in each instance is a con- structed reality, then this peculiar form of production fits particu- larly well with the notion of an external influence. This was demonstrated very well by the successful military censorship of re- ports about the Gulf War. All the censorship had to do was operate according to the ways of the media; it had to contribute to achiev- ing the desired construction and exclude independent information, which would hardly have been obtainable anyway. Since the war was staged as a media event from the start and since the parallel action of filming or interpreting data simultaneously served mili- tary and news production purposes, de-coupling would have brought about an almost total loss of information in any case. So in order to exercise censorship, not much more was required than
? to take the media's chronic need for information into account and provide them with new information for the necessary continuation of programmes. 12 Thus, what was mainly shown was the military machinery in operation. The fact that the victims' side of the war was almost completely erased in the process aroused considerable criticism; but most likely only because this completely contradicted the picture built up by the media themselves of what a war should look like.
? Self-reference and Other- reference
Before we proceed, it is necessary first to analyse more closely the distinction between self-reference and other-reference that is built into the system. What must be obvious to every external observer (us, for example) is that this is the way in which the operationally produced boundary of the system, the difference of system and en- vironment, is copied into the system. So the system has first to oper- ate and continue its operations - for example, be able to live or communicate - before it is able to use internally the difference pro- duced in this way as a distinction and thus as a schema of its own observations. 1 We must therefore distinguish between difference and distinction, and that requires us to establish a system reference (here, mass media) or, in other words, the observation of an observer who is able to distinguish himself from that which he is observing.
Put more abstractly and in mathematical terminology, what is involved (for us as observers) is a 're-entry' of a distinction into that which has been distinguished by it. As is shown by the calculus of forms worked out by Spencer Brown,2 re-entry is a boundary operation of a calculation which remains at the level of first-order observation and within the context of binary distinctions. 3 A re- entry must be assumed to be unformulable at first (as observing requires a distinction and therefore presupposes the distinction be- tween observation and distinction) yet can still be described in the end - but only in a way that results in an 'unresolvable indetermi- nacy' which can no longer be dealt with in the strict mathematical forms of arithmetic and (Boolean) algebra. 4
? One important consequence, which Heinz von Foerster empha- sized early on,5 is that a calculus of this kind can no longer be conceived of as a tool for establishing 'objective' truth representationally, but rather becomes 'bi-stable' and thus gener- ates its own time which, like a computer, it 'consumes', as it were, through the sequence of its own operations. The internally pro- duced indeterminacy is therefore resolved in a succession of opera- tions which are able to realize a variety of things sequentially. The system takes its time and forms every operation in the expectation that others will follow. The system of the mass media also works in this way, with the assumption that its own communications will be continued during the next hour or on the next day. Each programme holds the promise of another programme. It is never a matter of simply representing the world in any one given moment.
A further consequence arises from the need for an 'imaginary state' for the continuation of operations which go beyond the cal- culus. 6 We could also say: the re-entry is a hidden paradox, be- cause it deals with different distinctions (system/environment and self-reference/other-reference) as if they were the same one. In the system's perception, the distinction between the world as it is and the world as it is observed becomes blurred. 7 It is true that there are numerous culturally reliable ways of correcting mistakes; and ever since Marx and Freud there have also been ways of casting suspi- cion on oneself in the knowledge (already conveyed by the mass media) that one is being guided by latent interests or motives. It is for such purposes that society has 'critical' intellectuals and thera- pists. But in operational reality these are only correctional reserva- tions, that is, future perspectives, whereas in the operationally current present the world as it is and the world as it is being ob- served cannot be distinguished.
What is needed in order to resolve this paradox of the confusion of two worlds is imagination or creative ideas which refer reflex- ively to the state of the system just reached, but which are not determined by it. The state of the system enters further communi- cation as an irritation, as a surprise, as a novelty, without this mystery of the source, the origin of the novelty of the new being able to be clarified by the operations of the system. 8 The system presupposes itself as a self-produced irritation, without being ac-
? cessible through its own operations, and then sets about trans- forming irritation into information, which it produces for society (and for itself in society). That is precisely why the reality of a system is always a correlate of the system's own operations, al- ways its own construction. It is the topics of communication which ensure that the mass media, in spite of their operational closure, do not take off, do not take leave of society. Topics are an un- avoidable requirement of communication. 9 They represent com- munication's other-reference. They organize communication's memory. They gather contributions into complexes of elements that belong together, so that it can be discerned in the course of communication whether a topic is being retained and carried for- ward or whether it is being changed. At the level of topics, then, other-reference and self-reference are constantly being coordinated in relation to each other within the system's own communication. 10 A topic such as AIDS is not a product of the mass media them- selves. It is merely taken up by them and then dealt with in a par- ticular way, subjected to a thematic trajectory that cannot be explained from medical diagnoses nor from the communication between doctors and patients. 11 Above all, recursive public discus- sion of the topic, the prerequisite that it is already known about and that there is a need for further information, is a typical prod- uct of and requirement for the continuation of mass media com- munication; and securing this public recursivity in turn has a retroactive effect upon communication in the environment of the mass media - for example, on medical research or on the plans of the pharmaceutical industry which stands to make billions in turn- over from politically dictated compulsory testing.
Topics therefore serve the structural coupling of the mass media with other social domains; and in doing this they are so elastic and so diversifiable that the mass media are able to use their topics to reach every part of society, whereas the systems in the inner social environment of the mass media, such as politics, the economy or law, often have difficulty presenting their topics to the mass media and having them taken up in an appropriate way. The success of the mass media throughout society is based on making sure that topics are accepted, regardless of whether there is a positive or a negative response to information, proposals for meaning-making
? or recognizable judgements. Interest in a topic is frequently based precisely on the fact that both positions are possible.
Once having been made public, topics can be dealt with on the basis of being known about; indeed it can be assumed that they are known to be known about, as private opinions and contributions to the individual topics circulate openly - just as the effect of money as a medium is based on securing acceptance through the lifting of controls on individuals' use of it. And in both cases the extent to which controls are lifted on individuals' dissent or preferences var- ies from topic to topic and from price to price. Such arrangements shatter the stereotypical assumption that starts from individuals alone and posits a reciprocal relationship of exclusion of consent and dissent or conformity and individuality. Through the increase in structural complexity and through the evolution of appropriate media, society is able to realize more of each. Moreover, the fact that things are known to be known about ensures the necessary acceleration of communication. It can be based on things that can be presupposed and concentrate on introducing specific surprises anew (and as new).
Our way of dealing with this is to suspect that there is manipulation at work, and yet no consequences of any im- port ensue because knowledge acquired from the mass media merges together as if of its own accord into a self-reinforcing structure. Even if all knowledge were to carry a warning that it was open to doubt, it would still have to be used as a foundation, as a starting point. Unlike in the gothic novels of the eighteenth century, the solution to the problem cannot be found in someone secretly pulling strings be- hind the scenes, however much even sociologists themselves would
like to believe this to be the case. What we are dealing with - and this is the theory to be elaborated in what follows - is an effect of the functional differentiation of modern society. This effect can be com- prehended, it can be the subject of theoretical reflection. But we are not talking about a mystery that would be solved once it is made known. Rather, one could say that modern society has an 'Eigenvalue' or an 'Eigenbehaviour'3 - in other words, recursively stabilized func- tional mechanisms, which remain stable even when their genesis and their mode of functioning have been revealed.
? In what follows, the term 'mass media' includes all those institu- tions of society which make use of copying technologies to dissemi- nate communication. This means principally books, magazines and newspapers manufactured by the printing press, but also all kinds of photographic or electronic copying procedures, provided that they generate large quantities of products whose target groups are as yet undetermined. Also included in the term is the dissemination of communication via broadcasting, provided that it is generally accessible and does not merely serve to maintain a telephone con- nection between individual participants. The mass production of manuscripts from dictation, as in medieval writing rooms, does not qualify for inclusion, nor does the public accessibility of the room in which the communication takes place - in other words, not public lectures, theatrical productions, exhibitions, or concerts, though the term does include the circulation of such performances via film or diskette. This delimitation may appear somewhat arbi- trary, but the basic idea is that it is the mechanical manufacture of a product as the bearer of communication - but not writing itself - which has led to the differentiation of a particular system of the mass media. Thus, the technology of dissemination plays the same kind of role as that played by the medium of money in the differen- tiation of the economy: it merely constitutes a medium which makes formations of forms possible. These formations in turn, unlike the medium itself, constitute the communicative operations which en- able the differentiation and operational closure of the system.
The crucial point at any rate is that no interaction among those co-present can take place between sender and receivers. Interaction is ruled out by the interposition of technology, and this has far- reaching consequences which define for us the concept of mass media. Exceptions are possible (though never with all participants); however, they come across as staged and are indeed handled as such in broadcasting studios. They do not alter in the slightest the technologically conditioned necessity for interruption of contact. The interruption of direct contact, on the one hand, ensures high levels of freedom of communication. A surplus of possibilities for communication thus arises which can only be regulated within the system, by means of self-organization and the system's own con- structions of reality. On the other hand, two selecting factors are at
? work: the extent of willingness to transmit and the amount of in- terest in tuning in, which cannot be coordinated centrally. The organizations which produce mass media communication are de- pendent upon assumptions concerning acceptability. 4 This leads not only to the standardization but also to the differentiation of their programmes, or at any rate to a standardization not tailored to individuals. This, however, is precisely how individual participants have the chance to get what they want, or what they believe they need to know in their own milieu (for example, as politicians or teachers), from the range of programmes on offer. The mode of operation of the mass media is thus subject to external structural conditions which place limits on what they are able to realize.
We can speak of the reality of the mass media in a dual sense. Our title is intended to mark this dual meaning and is therefore to be understood as ambivalent. The unity of this twofold meaning is the point which is to be elaborated in the following discussion.
The reality of the mass media, their real reality, as we might say, consists in their own operations. Things are printed and broadcast. Things are read. Programmes are received. Numerous communica- tions involving preparation and subsequent discussion closely sur- round this activity. However, the process of dissemination is only possible on the basis of technologies. The way in which these tech- nologies work structures and limits what is possible as mass com- munication. This has to be taken into account in any theory of the mass media. Nonetheless, we do not want to regard the work of these machines, nor indeed their mechanical or electronic internal workings, as an operation within the system of the mass media. Not everything which is a condition of possibility of systems op- erations can be a part of the operational sequences of the system itself. (This is also true, of course, of living beings and indeed of any autopoietic system. ) It makes good sense, therefore, to regard the real reality of the mass media as the communications which go on within and through them. We have no doubt that such commu- nications do in fact take place (even though, from an epistemologi- cal point of view, all statements, including these, are the statements of an observer and to this extent have their own reality in the op- erations of the observer).
Whereas we exclude - notwithstanding their importance - tech-
? nical apparatuses, the 'materialities of communication',5 from the operation of communicating because they are not what is being uttered, we do include reception (be it comprehending or mis-com- prehending). Communication only comes about when someone watches, listens, reads - and understands to the extent that further communication could follow on. The mere act of uttering some- thing, then, does not, in and of itself, constitute communication. On the other hand, it is difficult in the case of the mass media (in contrast to interaction that occurs among those co-present) to determine the target group involved in each instance. To a large extent, therefore, obvious presence has to be substituted by assump- tions. This is especially true if the process of turning comprehension/ mis-comprehension into further communication within or outside the system of the mass media is also to be taken into account. How- ever, this gap in competence does have the advantage that recursive loops do not get drawn too tightly, that communication does not immediately become blocked by failures and contradictions, and that, instead, it is able to seek out a willing audience and to experi- ment with possibilities.
These conceptual outlines refer to the operations that actually occur by which the system reproduces itself and its difference to the environment. However, we can speak of the reality of the mass media in another sense, that is, in the sense of what appears to them, or through them to others, to be reality. Put in Kantian terms: the mass media generate a transcendental illusion. According to this understanding, the activity of the mass media is regarded not simply as a sequence of operations, but rather as a sequence of observations or, to be more precise, of observing operations. In order to come to this understanding of the mass media, then, we have to observe their observing. For the approach introduced first above, first-order observation is sufficient, as if we were dealing with facts. For the second approach, it is necessary to adopt the attitude of a second-order observer, an observer of observers. 6
In order to hold on to this distinction, we can speak (always with reference to an observer) of a first reality and of a second (or ob- served) reality. What we now observe is a doubling of reality which takes place in the observed system of the mass media. It does in- deed communicate - about something. About something else or
? about itself. What we have, therefore, is a system which is capable of distinguishing between self-reference and other-reference (Fremdreferenz). Within the terms of a classical discourse of truth as well as of ordinary, everyday understandings of truth, it would be interesting at this point to know whether that which the media report is true or not true; or if it is half true and half not true be- cause it is being 'manipulated'. But how are we to tell? This may be possible in isolated cases for one or another observer and in par- ticular for the systems being reported on; but for the mass daily flow of communications it is, of course, impossible. This issue will be kept firmly outside the discussion that follows. We shall stick to our starting point, namely, that the mass media, as observing sys- tems, are forced to distinguish between self-reference and other- reference. They cannot do otherwise. They cannot simply consider themselves to be the truth - and therein lies a sufficient guarantee for the time being. As a result, they must construct reality - an- other reality, different from their own.
This may at first seem completely trivial. It would not even be worth mentioning, if this kind of 'constructivism' were not a topic of heated debate at the level of epistemology and even for the mass media themselves. 7 However, if all knowledge must be acquired on the basis of a distinction between self-reference and other-refer- ence, it is also the case that all knowledge (and therefore all reality) is a construction. For this distinction between self-reference and other-reference cannot exist in the system's environment (what would be 'self' here, and what would be 'other'? ), but rather only within the system itself.
We therefore opt for operational constructivism, not only here but also in the realm of epistemology. 8 Constructivist theories main- tain that cognitive systems are not in a position to distinguish be- tween the conditions of existence of real objects and the conditions of their own knowledge because they have no access to such real objects other than through knowledge. It is certainly the case that this defect can be corrected at the level of second-order observa- tion, the observation of cognitive operations of other systems. In that instance, it is possible to see how their (other systems') frames shape their knowledge. However, this merely leads to a recurrence of the problem at the level of second-order observation. Even ob-
? servers of other observers cannot distinguish the conditions of ex- istence of these latter observers from the conditions of knowing that what they are dealing with are particular, self-conditioning observers.
Even given the divergence between first-order and second-order observation, this distinction does not remove the basic premise of constructivism but rather confirms it by referring back to itself, that is, 'autologically'. Regardless of how cognition reflects upon itself, the primary reality lies not in 'the world out there', but rather in the cognitive operations themselves,9 because the latter are only possible under two conditions, namely, that they form a self- reproducing system and that this system can only observe by dis- tinguishing between self-reference and other-reference. These conditions are to be thought of as empirical (not as transcen- dental). This also means they can only be fulfilled on the basis of numerous other assumptions which cannot be guaranteed through the system itself. Operational constructivism has no doubt that an environment exists. If it did, of course, the concept of the system's boundary, which presupposes that there is another side, would make no sense either. The theory of operational constructivism does not lead to a 'loss of world', it does not deny that reality exists. How- ever, it assumes that the world is not an object but is rather a horizon, in the phenomenological sense. It is, in other words, in- accessible. And that is why there is no possibility other than to construct reality and perhaps to observe observers as they construct reality. Granted, it may be the case that different observers then have the impression that they are seeing 'the same thing' and that theorists of transcendentalism are only able to explain this through the construction of transcendental a prioris - this invisible hand which keeps knowledge in order in spite of individuality. But in fact this too is a construction, because it is simply not possible with- out the respective system-specific distinction between self-reference and other-reference.
What is meant by 'reality' can therefore only be an internal cor- relate of the system's operations - and not, say, a characteristic which attaches to objects of knowledge additionally to that which distinguishes them in terms of individuality or kind. Reality, then, is nothing more than an indicator of successful tests for consistency
? in the system. Reality is produced within the system by means of sense-making. It arises whenever inconsistencies which might emerge from the part played by memory in the system's operations are resolved - for example, by the construction of space and time as dimensions with various points at which different perceptions or memories can be localized without conflicting with one another. If reality is expressly emphasized in the communication (a 'real' lemon, a 'real' experience), then what is simultaneously emphasized is that doubts are possible and perhaps even appropriate. The more com- plex the system becomes and the more it exposes itself to irrita- tions, the more variety the world can permit without relinquishing any reality - and the more the system can afford to work with negations, with fictions, with 'merely analytical' or statistical as- sumptions which distance it from the world as it is.
In this case, however, every statement about reality is tied to system references which cannot be further generalized (transcendentalized). So our question now has the form: how do mass media construct reality? Or, to put it in a more complicated way (and related to one's own self-reference! ): how can we (as so- ciologists, for example) describe the reality of their construction of reality? The question is not: how do the mass media distort reality through the manner of their representations? For that would pre- suppose an ontological, available, objectively accessible reality that can be known without resort to construction; it would basically presuppose the old cosmos of essences. Scientists might indeed be of the opinion that they have a better knowledge of reality than the way it is represented in the mass media, committed as these are to 'popularization'. But that can only mean comparing one's own con- struction to another. One may do that, encouraged by a society which believes scientific descriptions to be authentic knowledge of reality. But this has no bearing whatever on the possibility of first asking: how do mass media construct reality?
Media research in communication studies faces a similar ques- tion when it describes the increasing influence of the mass media on social events over the past few decades. 10 What ought to be taken, by their own standards, as success is restylized as a crisis. But the description as crisis would presuppose that it is possible to react by changing structures. Such a possibility does not seem likely,
? however. The crisis does not concern the way the mass media oper- ate, only their self-description, the lack of an adequate reflexive theory. In order to respond to this challenge, it will not simply be a matter of starting from the assumption of an increase in influence over the past few decades - much as it is conspicuous, for example, that companies no longer refer to society via their product alone but also, as with mass media suggestion, via 'culture' and 'ethics'. Even the invention of the rotary printing press is not the decisive caesura, but only one step in the process of intensification of ef- fects. Observation and critique of mass media effects had already become commonplace long before. 11 What is needed is a broader period of historical observation, basically reaching back to when the printing press came into its own; and what is needed above all are theoretical tools which are abstract enough to make a place for the theory of the mass media within a general theory of modern society. In what follows this occurs by way of the assumption that the mass media are one of the function systems of modern society, which, like all others, owes its increased effectiveness to the differ- entiation, operational closure and autopoietic autonomy of the sys- tem concerned.
Moreover, the dual meaning of reality both as an operation that actually occurs, that is, is observable, and as the reality of society and its world which is generated in this way, makes it clear that the concepts of operational closure, autonomy and construction by no means rule out causal influences from outside. Especially if it has to be assumed that what one is dealing with in each instance is a con- structed reality, then this peculiar form of production fits particu- larly well with the notion of an external influence. This was demonstrated very well by the successful military censorship of re- ports about the Gulf War. All the censorship had to do was operate according to the ways of the media; it had to contribute to achiev- ing the desired construction and exclude independent information, which would hardly have been obtainable anyway. Since the war was staged as a media event from the start and since the parallel action of filming or interpreting data simultaneously served mili- tary and news production purposes, de-coupling would have brought about an almost total loss of information in any case. So in order to exercise censorship, not much more was required than
? to take the media's chronic need for information into account and provide them with new information for the necessary continuation of programmes. 12 Thus, what was mainly shown was the military machinery in operation. The fact that the victims' side of the war was almost completely erased in the process aroused considerable criticism; but most likely only because this completely contradicted the picture built up by the media themselves of what a war should look like.
? Self-reference and Other- reference
Before we proceed, it is necessary first to analyse more closely the distinction between self-reference and other-reference that is built into the system. What must be obvious to every external observer (us, for example) is that this is the way in which the operationally produced boundary of the system, the difference of system and en- vironment, is copied into the system. So the system has first to oper- ate and continue its operations - for example, be able to live or communicate - before it is able to use internally the difference pro- duced in this way as a distinction and thus as a schema of its own observations. 1 We must therefore distinguish between difference and distinction, and that requires us to establish a system reference (here, mass media) or, in other words, the observation of an observer who is able to distinguish himself from that which he is observing.
Put more abstractly and in mathematical terminology, what is involved (for us as observers) is a 're-entry' of a distinction into that which has been distinguished by it. As is shown by the calculus of forms worked out by Spencer Brown,2 re-entry is a boundary operation of a calculation which remains at the level of first-order observation and within the context of binary distinctions. 3 A re- entry must be assumed to be unformulable at first (as observing requires a distinction and therefore presupposes the distinction be- tween observation and distinction) yet can still be described in the end - but only in a way that results in an 'unresolvable indetermi- nacy' which can no longer be dealt with in the strict mathematical forms of arithmetic and (Boolean) algebra. 4
? One important consequence, which Heinz von Foerster empha- sized early on,5 is that a calculus of this kind can no longer be conceived of as a tool for establishing 'objective' truth representationally, but rather becomes 'bi-stable' and thus gener- ates its own time which, like a computer, it 'consumes', as it were, through the sequence of its own operations. The internally pro- duced indeterminacy is therefore resolved in a succession of opera- tions which are able to realize a variety of things sequentially. The system takes its time and forms every operation in the expectation that others will follow. The system of the mass media also works in this way, with the assumption that its own communications will be continued during the next hour or on the next day. Each programme holds the promise of another programme. It is never a matter of simply representing the world in any one given moment.
A further consequence arises from the need for an 'imaginary state' for the continuation of operations which go beyond the cal- culus. 6 We could also say: the re-entry is a hidden paradox, be- cause it deals with different distinctions (system/environment and self-reference/other-reference) as if they were the same one. In the system's perception, the distinction between the world as it is and the world as it is observed becomes blurred. 7 It is true that there are numerous culturally reliable ways of correcting mistakes; and ever since Marx and Freud there have also been ways of casting suspi- cion on oneself in the knowledge (already conveyed by the mass media) that one is being guided by latent interests or motives. It is for such purposes that society has 'critical' intellectuals and thera- pists. But in operational reality these are only correctional reserva- tions, that is, future perspectives, whereas in the operationally current present the world as it is and the world as it is being ob- served cannot be distinguished.
What is needed in order to resolve this paradox of the confusion of two worlds is imagination or creative ideas which refer reflex- ively to the state of the system just reached, but which are not determined by it. The state of the system enters further communi- cation as an irritation, as a surprise, as a novelty, without this mystery of the source, the origin of the novelty of the new being able to be clarified by the operations of the system. 8 The system presupposes itself as a self-produced irritation, without being ac-
? cessible through its own operations, and then sets about trans- forming irritation into information, which it produces for society (and for itself in society). That is precisely why the reality of a system is always a correlate of the system's own operations, al- ways its own construction. It is the topics of communication which ensure that the mass media, in spite of their operational closure, do not take off, do not take leave of society. Topics are an un- avoidable requirement of communication. 9 They represent com- munication's other-reference. They organize communication's memory. They gather contributions into complexes of elements that belong together, so that it can be discerned in the course of communication whether a topic is being retained and carried for- ward or whether it is being changed. At the level of topics, then, other-reference and self-reference are constantly being coordinated in relation to each other within the system's own communication. 10 A topic such as AIDS is not a product of the mass media them- selves. It is merely taken up by them and then dealt with in a par- ticular way, subjected to a thematic trajectory that cannot be explained from medical diagnoses nor from the communication between doctors and patients. 11 Above all, recursive public discus- sion of the topic, the prerequisite that it is already known about and that there is a need for further information, is a typical prod- uct of and requirement for the continuation of mass media com- munication; and securing this public recursivity in turn has a retroactive effect upon communication in the environment of the mass media - for example, on medical research or on the plans of the pharmaceutical industry which stands to make billions in turn- over from politically dictated compulsory testing.
Topics therefore serve the structural coupling of the mass media with other social domains; and in doing this they are so elastic and so diversifiable that the mass media are able to use their topics to reach every part of society, whereas the systems in the inner social environment of the mass media, such as politics, the economy or law, often have difficulty presenting their topics to the mass media and having them taken up in an appropriate way. The success of the mass media throughout society is based on making sure that topics are accepted, regardless of whether there is a positive or a negative response to information, proposals for meaning-making
? or recognizable judgements. Interest in a topic is frequently based precisely on the fact that both positions are possible.
Once having been made public, topics can be dealt with on the basis of being known about; indeed it can be assumed that they are known to be known about, as private opinions and contributions to the individual topics circulate openly - just as the effect of money as a medium is based on securing acceptance through the lifting of controls on individuals' use of it. And in both cases the extent to which controls are lifted on individuals' dissent or preferences var- ies from topic to topic and from price to price. Such arrangements shatter the stereotypical assumption that starts from individuals alone and posits a reciprocal relationship of exclusion of consent and dissent or conformity and individuality. Through the increase in structural complexity and through the evolution of appropriate media, society is able to realize more of each. Moreover, the fact that things are known to be known about ensures the necessary acceleration of communication. It can be based on things that can be presupposed and concentrate on introducing specific surprises anew (and as new).
An observer (and this might also be organizations within the sys- tem of the mass media) can distinguish between topics and func- tions of communication. For example, he can say to himself and to others: if we don't run this or that news item, if we cancel the weather report or, say, the 'bioscopes', we will lose our readership. To do this, communication must be reflected as communication; in other words self-reference has to be actualized. The topics/functions dis- tinction corresponds to the other-reference/self-reference distinc- tion. Using this distinction, the observer gains freedom in the choice of topic and, above all, in leaving out information. He does not need to be motivated solely by the truth, thereby making himself dependent on prescriptive guidelines. He can even run false or pos- sibly false information if he keeps an eye on the function and weighs up the value of sensationalism against the possible risk of being exposed.
Thus the system of the mass media reveals the consequences fa- cing a system which generates a difference of system and environ- ment through operational closure and which is thereby forced to distinguish internally between self-reference and other-reference and
? to lend substance to this distinction using its own ever-changing conditions. Thus it cannot be a matter of finding out how the world is with the help of this system, however distorted and in need of correction it may be, and then making this knowledge generally available. This is how the system's self-description might proclaim it. Instead, a sociological observer trained in systems theory will describe that and how the system connects one operation to an- other in self-constructed temporal horizons, referring again and again to its own state of information, in order to be capable of discerning novelties, surprises and, therefore, information values. It is easy to understand how in the process the suspicion of ma- nipulation being at work might arise. If the world cannot be repre- sented as it is and as it changes from moment to moment, the obvious thing to do instead is to look for solid clues in interests which ma- nipulate the system for their own ends, in other words to attribute conditions and operations of the system to some external cause or another. For the system itself, however, that remains a matter of ineffectual private opinions which in turn can be attributed to the one expressing them. Or else suspicion is based on scientifically more or less provable causal theories which can be reported on from time to time if the opportunity presents itself. The system can take up such criteria, but only in the form in which it can turn everything into a topic of mass media communication. The factual conditions underpinning this are and remain operational closure and, conditioned thus, the system's constructivist mode of opera- tion. The pressing question thereby takes a sociological turn. It must be: what kind of a society is it that describes itself and its world in this way?
? 3
Coding
The first question that arises when describing the mass media from a systems theoretical standpoint is how society allows such a sys- tem to be differentiated at all. For any communication can connect to any other communication, the only condition being that a con- text of meaning can be established.