No More Learning

Here, too, it is only the theoretically based issues which interest us. We are not concerned with the nature of entertainment or with how entertaining it is; we are not concerned with its quality, nor with differences in how demanding or otherwise it is; nor are we con- cerned with the idiosyncrasies of those who need entertainment or who simply enjoy being entertained and would miss it if it were not there. It is certainly true to say that entertainment is one compo- nent of modern leisure culture, charged with the function of de- stroying superfluous time. However, within the context of a theory of the mass media, we shall stick to problems concerning the con- struction of reality and to the question of what kind of effects the coding information/non-information has in this case.
We are best served here by taking the general model of the game as a point of orientation. This will also explain to us why it is that sports programmes, especially where replays are concerned, count more as entertainment than as news. 1 A game, too, is a kind of doubling of reality, where the reality perceived as the game is separ- ated off from normal reality without having to negate the latter. A second reality is created which conforms to certain conditions and from which perspective the usual ways of living life appear as real reality. The constitution of a game requires a time limit that is fore- seeable in advance. Games are episodes. They are not transitions to another way of living. People are only preoccupied with them from
? time to time, without being able to relinquish other opportunities or to shed other burdens. But that does not mean that real reality exists only before and after a game. Rather, everything that exists does so simultaneously. The game always contains, in each of its operations, references to the real reality which exists at the same time. With every move it marks itself as a game; and it can collapse at any moment if things suddenly get serious. The cat jumps onto the chessboard. 2 The continuation of the game requires that the boundaries be kept under constant surveillance.
In social games involving several partners, this will happen by means of an orientation to a set of rules which people have in mind when they identify their own and others' behaviour (within the game) as appropriate. Behaviour both in accordance and in con- flict with the rules is part of the game; but behaviour which breaks the rules is only allowed as long as it can be corrected by being pointed out. Entertainment, on the other hand, is a different kind of game. 3 It does not assume complementary behaviour on the part of a partner, nor any rules agreed prior to it. Instead, the excerpt from reality in which the second world is constituted is marked visually or acoustically - as a book, as a screen, as a striking se- quence of specially prepared noises which are perceived as 'sounds' in this condition. 4 This external frame then releases a world in which a fictional reality of its own applies. A world! - and not merely, as in social games, a socially agreed sequence of behaviour.
This difference to social games brings us back to the system of the mass media. Just as in a game, so entertainment too can assume that viewers are able to observe beginning and end (unlike in their own life) because they experience things beforehand and still do afterwards. So they separate out, automatically as it were, the time of entertainment from the time which affects them themselves. But entertainment itself is by no means unreal (in the sense of not being there). It certainly does presuppose self-generated real objects, double-sided objects so to speak, which facilitate the transition from real reality to fictional reality, the crossing of the boundary. 5 These are texts or films. On the 'inside' of these objects the world of the imagination is to be found, invisible in real reality. This world of the imagination, because it does not have to coordinate the social behaviour of the observers, does not need any game rules. Instead
? it needs information. And it is precisely this which allows the mass media to construct a programme strand called entertainment, on the basis of their information/non-information code.
Moreover, in entertainment, not everything should be fictional, especially when the story is told as a fiction. The reader/viewer has to be put in a position very quickly to form a memory which fits the story, which is tailored to it. And he or she can only do this if provided with sufficient familiar details along with the pictures or the texts. Diderot made this point repeatedly. 6 What is demanded of the reader/viewer, therefore, is a trained (and yet, not consciously handled) capacity for making distinctions.
If these preliminary theoretical decisions are accepted, the prob- lem then concentrates on the question of how, with the aid of in- formation (instead of prescribed rules), a special reality can be excluded from entertainment. The answer to this question turns out to be more complicated than might at first appear.
Let us reiterate that information consists of differences which make a difference. The concept itself, then, presupposes a sequence of at least two events which have a marking effect. But then the difference which has been generated as information can in turn be a difference which makes a difference. In this sense, items of infor- mation are constantly and recursively linked together in a network. They emerge from each other, but can also be arranged in their sequentially with regard to more or less improbable results. This can happen in the strict form of a calculation (or a 'reckoning'), but also in processes which, from one step to the next, include other non-programmed information. In other words, it can happen in processes which only reveal that further items of information are required, and which these are, once the result of a particular piece ot information processing has become apparent. In this case, we will be given the impression (no matter whether or not the process itself describes itself in this way) that what we have is not a calcu- lation but rather a sequence of actions or decisions. It is only in the narrative context that it becomes clear what an action is, how far it extends into its past and into its future and which of the actor's characteristics are part of the action and which are not. Reference to other actions is indispensable for every constraint on the mean- ing of a single action - in everyday life just as in stories.
? This version of the problem of information presupposes that there are 'subjects', fictional identities which produce the unity of the story being told and simultaneously facilitate a conceptual leap to a (likewise constructed) personal identity of the viewer. The latter can compare the characters in the story with himself. 7
But that on its own does not justify viewing this kind of produc- tion of information generated from information (distinctions gen- erated from distinctions) as a game or as entertainment. It presupposes further that the sequence of operations which process information generates its own plausibility itself. As is similar in the case of technologies, a closure of the process occurs in the face of uncontrolled environmental influences. Whatever has made a dif- ference adequately accounts then for which further differences are possible. In this sense the process generates and transports an un- certainty, which it itself produces and renews again and again, and which depends upon further information. It (the process) lives off self-produced surprises, self-constructed tensions, and it is precisely this fictional unity that is the structure which enables real reality to be distinguished from fictional reality and the boundary from one realm to the other to be crossed.
It is taken for granted nowadays that an audience is capable of following this distinction of real and staged reality, and that it there- fore allows certain liberties to be taken with representations, such as speeding cars, which it would never allow itself to get away with. Viewed historically, such an ability to distinguish is one result of an evolution that is nowadays traced back to the emergence of stage theatre in the second half of the sixteenth century. 8 In contrast to medieval performance practice, the idea in Renaissance theatre is no longer to make visible the invisible aspects of the world, not to bring things together again, to symbolize the visible and the invis- ible, but nor is it about any obvious confusion of game and reality (with the result that the audience has to be calmed down and kept from intervening). Rather, it is about an autonomous production which is experienced as merely being fake and which, moreover, rehearses once again within itself the game of deception and reali- zation, of ignorance and knowledge, of motive-led presentation and of generalized suspicion of underlying motives. Individuals are thus at liberty to interpret their own life situations accordingly. Above
? all, however, the schema of expecting there to be a difference of appearance and reality in all social relationships comes to be a fixed part of a culture which in turn, with no further fuss, can then as- sume and build upon the fact that this is taken as given.
It is still possible to find literature in the seventeenth century which takes this to be so remarkable that it draws attention to it specially, indeed virtually offers it as a product of individual learn- ing and of the art of sophisticated living. 9 However, this way of reading reality becomes so rapidly widespread via the printing press that the mass media (then in the process of taking shape) are pre- pared for it and, if anything, have the problem of mobilizing ever new interest in it. The element of tension already mentioned, of generating and dissolving a self-created uncertainty, will have been useful for this.
It is the modern novel which provided the model with the great- est impact in this respect. The novel is clearly itself a product of the mass media and their calculated effect upon an audience. It is pos- sible to read off from a key figure like Daniel Defoe that the mod- ern novel arises out of modern journalism, and this on account of the need to distinguish facts and fictions with regard to printed publications. The printing press changes the way in which the world can credibly be presented to an audience, namely by asserting facts, or writings which have actually been discovered (but are recogniz- able as fiction), through to purely undisguised fictional stories which nonetheless contain enough familar material to be able to count as imagined reality. That the distinction of news or in-depth report- ing (both of which can be proven to be factual) and sufficiently realistic fictional stories comes about at all is down to technology, which enables printed products to be manufactured. 10
It is this distinction which enables fictional literature's loose link to reality and its larger liberties to be used to tell stories which, while fictitious, nonetheless provide readers with certain points of reference that relate back to the world they know and to their own life . However, because what happens in the stories is fictional, those points of reference are left up to the individual, although the range of possibilities is based on a general structure which underlies every kind of entertainment, namely the resolution of a self-induced un- certainty about how the story will end. Epic elements were already
? being eliminated during the course of the eighteenth century, and there was an acceleration of the plot, which is held up only by the intrigues generated within the novel itself. This is why planning a novel requires a reflection of time in time itself. The perspective is future-oriented, and therefore tense and exciting. At the same time, however, an adequate past must be provided to explain at the end how the uncertainty is resolved by information which had already been introduced but whose function had not been realized. One has to be able to return to something in order to close the circle. However future-oriented the plot is, 'the knot is untied only by the past and not by the future' (as Jean Paul instructs the novelist11). If the story aims to satisfy certain basic requirements for its own con- sistency (and fairy tales are a much discussed exception here), the way it unfolds must be able to refer back to the beginning of the story. In any case, the elements needed for resolving the tension have to be introduced before the end, and only the reader or viewer is left in the dark. This is why it is not worth reading something twice - or it is only worth doing if the reader wishes to concentrate instead on admiring the writer's artistic skill or if someone watch- ing a film wants to focus on the way it has been produced and directed. For a text or story to be exciting and entertaining, one must not know in advance how to read it or how to interpret it. People want to be entertained each time anew. For the same rea- son, every piece of entertainment must come to an end and must bring this about itself. The unity of the piece is the unity of the difference of future and past which has been allowed to enter into it. We know at the end: so that was it, and go away with the feeling of having been more or less well entertained. 12
By generating and resolving uncertainty of its own accord, a story that is told becomes individualized. This is how there can always be something new of interest in spite of the stereotypical repetition of the way stories are produced. The reader or viewer does not have to be told to forget as quickly as possible so that new things can be written and sold, as Ludwig Tieck asserts;13 rather, this hap- pens of its own accord as each element of tension is individually built up and then resolved.
In order to be able to generate and sustain tension, one has to have the author stepping back behind the text, because inside the
? text he would be someone who already knows the ending or who at any moment can make things turn out just as it suits him. Every trace of his involvement has to be erased. 14 The mechanism of gen- erating the text must not appear again in the text itself, because otherwise it would not be possible for self-reference and other-ref- erence to be clearly distinguished. 15 Although entertainment texts also have an author and are communicated, the difference of infor- mation and utterance must not appear in the text - if it did, the discrepancy of constative and performative textual components would come to light and the attention of the one engaged in under- standing would be drawn to this difference and thereby diverted. He would waver and have to decide whether he should pay more attention to the utterance and its motives or indeed to the beauty and connotative intricacies of its poetic forms,16 or whether he should just give himself over to being entertained. For entertain- ment means not seeking or finding any cause to answer communi- cation via communication. Instead, the observer can concentrate on the experience and the motives of the characters who are pre- sented in the text and in this respect learn second-order observa- tion. And since it is 'only' a matter of entertainment, the problem of authenticity does not arise, which it would in the case of a work of art. As an art form, then, the novel departs from the sphere of entertainment around the middle of the nineteenth century, with Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale, with Melville's The Confi- dence-Man, and gives it over to the mass media. Indeed, twentieth- century art can no longer be described as fictional at all, since fictionality presupposes that we can know what the world ought to look like in order for the fiction to be able to count as a correct description of the world. 17 It is precisely this description, however, which is systematically boycotted in modern art - and, as we can say once more, is left to the mass media which thus fulfil the re- quirements for entertainment.
As is always the case with operational closure, differentiation generates surplus possibilities in the first instance. Forms of enter- tainment therefore differ according to how these surpluses are re- duced. The basic pattern for this is the narrative, which in turn has differentiated itself into a considerable abundance of forms. Ap- parently there are only a few functional equivalents to this (always
? from the perspective of entertainment and not, for example, of art). One example would be competitions of all kinds, such as quiz pro- grammes or broadcasts of sporting events. We do not need to go into detail here, but the question remains as to how this imaginary variety of events is linked back to external reality.
It seems that knowledge which viewers already have must be referred to copiously. In this respect, entertainment has an amplify- ing effect in relation to knowledge that is already present. But it is not oriented towards instruction, as with news and in-depth re- porting. Instead it only uses existing knowledge in order to stand out against the latter. This can come about when the individual viewer's range of experience - always random - is exceeded, be it in terms of what is typical (other people are no better off than I am) or in terms of what is ideal (which, however, we do not have to expect for ourselves), or again in terms of highly unlikely combina- tions (which we ourselves luckily do not have to encounter in every- day life). In addition, it is possible to engage body and mind more directly - for example, where erotica is concerned, or detective stor- ies which initially mislead the viewers who know they are being misled, and especially foot-tapping music. By being offered from the outside, entertainment aims to activate that which we ourselves experience, hope for, fear, forget - just as the narrating of myths once did. What the romantics longed for in vain, a 'new mythol- ogy', is brought about by the entertainment forms of the mass me- dia. Entertainment reimpregnates what one already is; and, as always, here too feats of memory are tied to opportunities for learn- ing.
Films in particular use this general form of making distinctions plausible by having distinctions arise sooner or later within the same story. They condense them even further by including distinc- tions which can only be perceived (not narrated! ). The location of the action, its 'furniture', is also made visible and, with its own distinctions (elegant apartments, speeding cars, strange technical equipment etc. ), simultaneously serves as a context in which action acquires a profile and in which what is said explicitly can be re- duced to a minimum. One can 'see' motives by their effects and can get the impression that intentions behind actions are only a part of the whole series of events and that those engaging in action do not
? have a clear idea themselves of what they are doing. Almost imper- ceptibly viewers come to understand themselves as observers of observers and to discover similar or perhaps different attitudes within themselves.
The novel itself had found its leitmotifs in the bodies of its pro- tagonists, especially in the barriers to the controllability of bodily processes. 18 This explains the dominance of the erotic and of dan- gerous adventures in which the reader can then participate voy- euristically using a body-to-body analogy. The tension in the narrative is 'symbolically' anchored in the barriers to controlla- bility of each reader's body. If the story is also filmed or broadcast on television, these emphases on the erotic and on adventure do not need to be changed; but in pictures, they are capable of being presented in an even more dramatic, complex and simultaneously more impressive way. They are also complemented in specific ways - for example, by time being made visible through speed or by boundary situations of bodily control being presented in artistic film components and in sport, through which boundary cases the problem of the sudden change from control to lack of control be- comes visible. This is why sports programmes on television (as opposed to the results which one can read) are primarily intended for entertainment, because they stabilize tension on the border of controlled and uncontrolled physicality. This experience makes it clear in retrospect how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to narrate the course of sporting events - of horse races through to tennis matches. One has to go there oneself or watch it on televi- sion.
The artistic form of the novel as well as fictional forms of excit- ing entertainment derived from it posit individuals who no longer draw their identity from their background but who instead have to shape it themselves. A correspondingly open socialization, geared towards 'inner' values and certainties, appears to begin amongst the 'bourgeois' classes of the eighteenth century; today it has be- come unavoidable. No sooner than he is born, every individual finds himself to be someone who has yet to determine his individu- ality or have it determined according to the stipulation of a game 'of which neither he nor anyone else back to the beginning of time knew the rules or the risks or the stakes'. 19 It is extremely tempting
? to try out virtual realities on oneself - at least in an imagination which one can break off at any time.
The form of narrative entertainment gained as a result of the novel is no longer the sole dominant form today. At least since television became widespread, a second form has appeared along- side it, namely the genre of highly personal experiential accounts. People are put before the camera and asked all kinds of questions, often with interest focused on the most intimate details of their private lives. Whoever agrees to get into this kind of situation can be assumed to be willing to talk; the questioner can proceed freely and the viewer can enjoy feeling no embarrassment whatever. But why?
It seems that interest in such programmes lies in being presented with a credible reality, but one which does not have to be subject to consensus. Despite living in the same world (there is no other), viewers are not expected to join in any consensus of opinion. They are at liberty to agree or to disagree. They are offered cognitive and motivational freedom - and all this without any loss of reality! The opposition of freedom and coercion is dissolved. One can make a choice oneself and is not even obliged to stand by what one thinks of oneself if things get serious.
Entertainment performances, therefore, always have a subtext which invites the participants to relate what they have seen or heard to themselves. The viewers are included as excluded third parties - as 'parasites', as Michel Serres puts it. 20 The sequences of distinc- tion, which develop from one another by one providing the oppor- tunity for another, make a second difference in their world of imagination - the difference to the knowledge, capabilities and feel- ings of the viewers. The issue here is not what impression the text, the programme, the film makes on the individual viewer. And nei- ther can the effect be grasped with the simple concept of analogy formation and imitation - as if one were trying out on oneself what one had read in a novel or seen in a film. One is not motivated to align one's own behaviour (this would quickly place too much strain on one's own capabilities and, as we know, would look ridicu- lous). 21 One learns to observe observers, in particular, looking to see how they react to situations, in other words, how they them- selves observe. 22 At the same time, as a second-order observer one
? is cleverer but also less motivated than the one whom one is ob- serving; and one can recognize that the latter remains largely non- transparent to himself - or, with Freud, not only has he something t 0 hide, but he is for himself something that remains latent.
What goes on in each individual viewer, the non-linear causali- ties, dissipative structural developments, negative or positive feed- back messages etc. triggered by such coincidental observations, can simply not be predicted; neither can they be controlled by pro- gramme choices in the mass media. Psychological effects are much too complex, much too self-determined and much too varied to be capable of being included in communication conveyed via the mass media. What is meant here, rather, is that every operation that goes on in the fictional sphere of the imagination also carries with it an other-reference, that is, the reference to real reality as it has always existed - known, judged and always having been there as the topic of normal ongoing communication. And it is above all this orienta- tion of the distinction of real and fictional reality that produces the entertainment value of entertainment communication. The 'trick' with entertainment is the constantly accompanying comparison, and forms of entertainment are essentially distinguished from one another in how they make use of world correlates: confirming or rejecting them, uncertain of the ending right until the very last moment or calmly with the certainty that: that kind of thing can- not happen to me.
Psychic systems which participate in communication through the mass media in order to entertain themselves are thus invited to make the connection back to themselves. This has been described since the eighteenth century by the distinction of copy and authen- tic 'being oneself',23 and there are certainly imitational self- stylizations which are more or less unconscious, whose widespread existence can only be explained in this way - for example, a gesture of casualness or of brashness, expressing autonomy in the face of expectations. But this imitation/authenticity distinction does not adequately explain how the individual identifies herself within this bifurcation as an individual. This seems to happen in the mode of self-observation, or to put it more precisely, by observing one's own observing. If the imitation/authenticity option is given, one can opt for both sides or sometimes for one and sometimes for the
? other, so long as one is observing oneself and is looking to find one's identity therein. Reflection can only yield up a characterless, non-transparent I which, however, as long as its body lives and places it in the world, can observe that it observes. And only thus is it possible, in determining what everyone is for oneself, to do with- out indications of background.
This discussion has made plain the special contribution of the 'entertainment' segment to the overall generation of reality. Enter- tainment enables one to locate oneself in the world as it is por- trayed. A second question then arises as to whether this manoeuvre turns out in such a way that one can be content with oneself and with the world. What also remains open is whether one identifies with the characters of the plot or registers differences. What is of- fered as entertainment does not commit anybody in a particular way; but there are sufficient clues (which one would find neither in the news nor in advertising) for work on one's own 'identity'. Fic- tional reality and real reality apparently remain different, and be- cause of this, individuals remain self-sufficient, as far as their identity is concerned. They neither must nor can communicate their iden- tity. Therefore, they do not need to commit themselves in any par- ticular way. But when this is no longer required in interactions or when it fails time and again, one can resort instead to materials from the range of entertainments offered by the mass media.
In this way, entertainment also regulates inclusion and exclu- sion, at least on the side of subjects. But no longer, as did the bour- geois drama or the novel of the eighteenth century, in a form which was tied to a typified expression of emotion and thus excluded the nobility (not yet having become bourgeois) and the underclass. Rather, it does so in the form of inclusion of all, with the exception of those who participate in entertainment to such a small extent that they are unable in certain cases to activate any interest and have, through abstinence (often arrogant abstinence), become ac- customed to a Self that is not dependent upon it and thus defines itself accordingly.
? Unity and Structural Couplings
The three programme strands which we have discussed separately can be distinguished clearly in type one from the other. This does not rule out the possibility of there being mutual borrowings. Typi- cal journalistic opinion has it that reports ought to be written in an entertaining way (but what does that mean? easily readable? ); and many sensationalistic news items published in the tabloid press are selected for their entertainment value;1 but here too entertainment should be understood in a broader sense and not in the sense de- scribed in detail above of the deconstruction of a self-induced un- certainty.
Advertising especially, which relates to the less than inspiring reality of the market, has to come up with something, that is, take up entertainment and reports about things already known about. The American press had initially secured its inde- pendence in the nineteenth century using advertisements, subse- quently inventing news and entertainment as well. 2 The effects of this historical genesis are still making themselves felt. A common example is how individual papers, the New York Times in particu- lar, use this typifying effect to distinguish themselves from it. Nowa- days it is especially in trade journals, or in dedicated newspaper pages given over to computer technology, cars, ecological garden- ing methods, holiday travel etc. , that one finds advertising being dressed up in factual information. Last but not least, the popular iconography of television produces a knowledge of images and re- call which encourages transfers from one strand to another. Within the individual programme strands, then, one can observe borrow-
? ings from others. Jokey advertising in particular plays with the re- ceiver's implicit knowledge without recalling it in a straightforward, direct way. Reports too are spiced up with elements of entertain- ment in terms of style or of how images are put together, in order not to bore. Nonetheless, it is normally easy to tell (if the produc- tion is not out to mislead) which programme strand is directing the product. If this assumption were to be doubted, it could easily be tested empirically.
Having said this, particular signals are needed that frame the programmes if the programme strand is to be recognized. In the case of newspaper advertisements, it must be clearly recognizable that the item is not news but an advert. In television, it may be unclear at any particular moment (for example, when 'zapping') whether one has happened upon an entertainment programme or news or an in-depth report. The reader may recall the famous con- fusion which arose around the radio programme 'War of the Worlds', in which many listeners believed that extraterrestrial be- ings really had landed on the Earth. Typically, films are marked as such at the beginning and at the end. Advertising can almost al- ways be recognized immediately as such. External framing elements are only recognizable at the moment of their broadcasting, but for the experienced viewer there are abundant internal signals which enable a correct categorization. 3 The problem only arises, though, because a single technological medium is being used which can be used for very different forms.
In spite of this, it will not be easy to accept the theory of the unity of a mass media system based on three such different pillars as news/in-depth reporting, advertising and entertainment. What is striking in the first instance is how different these ways of commu- nicating are. It may indeed be possible to be quite easily convinced empirically that all three strands use the same technology of dis- semination and can regularly be found in the same newspaper or within a single broadcasting hour on radio or television. But if one starts out from the coding of information/non-information, what is impressive is the variety of kinds of realization, the variety of ways in which irritation and information are generated in the indi- vidual spheres of the media.
News, advertising and entertainment certainly differ according
? to how they can be used in further communication. If people are well informed from the news or from in-depth reports, they can pass on this information or perhaps talk about it instead of about the weather in order to get further communication going. There is not much point in doing that in the case of advertising, and even writh entertainment further communication does not consist in the stories being spun further or in learning lessons and proclaiming them. People may exchange judgements about taste and prove them- selves capable of making a judgement. But on the whole the contri- bution of all three forms of mass media communication - and this is where they converge - can be said to be in creating the condi- tions for further communication which do not themselves have to be communicated in the process. This applies to being up-to-date with one's information just as it does to being up-to-date cultur- ally, as far as judgements about values, ways of life, what is in/ what is out of fashion are concerned. Thanks to the mass media, then, it is also possible to judge whether it is considered acceptable or provocative to stand apart and reveal one's own opinion. Since the mass media have generated a background reality which can be taken as a starting point, one can take off from there and create a profile for oneself by expressing personal opinions, saying how one sees the future, demonstrating preferences etc.
The social function of the mass media is thus not to be found in the totality of information actualized by each (that is, not on the positively valued side of their code) but in the memory generated by it. 4 For the social system, memory consists in being able to take certain assumptions about reality as given and known about in every communication, without having to introduce them specially into the communication and justify them. This memory is at work in all the operations of the social system, that is, in every communi- cation, it contributes to the ongoing checks on consistency by keep- ing one eye on the known world, and it excludes as unlikely any information that is too risky. In this way, the extracts from reality that are dealt with (themes) are overlaid with a second reality that is not subject to consensus. Everyone can, as an observer, expose himself or herself to observation by others without getting the feel- ing of living in different, incommensurable worlds. A kind of spotti- ness in the communication of unconventional judgements might
? then come about, which can still be based on a reality that is as- sumed by both and does not run the risk (or does so only in border- line cases) of being interpreted psychiatrically. Direct references to the information communicated may vary and relate mainly to cur- rent news; but with the generation of a latent everyday culture, and the constant reproduction of recursivity of social communicating, the programme strands work together to water the same garden bed, as it were, from which one can harvest as necessary.
So mass media are not media in the sense of conveying informa- tion from those who know to those who do not know. They are media to the extent that they make available background knowl- edge and carry on writing it as a starting point for communication. The constituting distinction is not knowledge/lack of knowledge, but medium and form. 5 The medium provides a huge, but nonethe- less limited, range of possibilities from which communication can select forms when it is temporarily deciding on particular topics. And this is precisely where news/in-depth reporting, advertising and entertainment contribute in very different ways.
A further reason for the reproduction of the difference of news/ in-depth reporting, advertising and entertainment can be said to be that with these strands the mass media are maintaining different structural couplings at the same time and thus also reproducing different dependencies on other function systems. Advertising is without doubt a market in its own right within the economic sys- tem, with its own organizations oriented towards special markets. But that is not all it is. For advertising has to make its product a reality via the auto-dynamics of the social system of the mass me- dia and not merely, as is typically the case with other products, via technological or physical-chemical-biological suitability for the sat- isfaction of a particular need. Within the strand of advertising, then, the economy is just as dependent upon the system of the mass me- dia as the latter is upon it; and, as is typical in cases of structural coupling, no logical asymmetry, no hierarchy can be detected. One can only establish, as with a thermostat, a cybernetic circle, where it then depends on the observer whether he or she thinks the heat- ing is regulating the temperature of the room by means of the ther- mostat, or the temperature of the room is regulating the heating system by means of the thermostat. 6
? What is less clear is the same set of facts in the case of entertain- ment. The principle of resolving a self-induced uncertainty via information sequences can also be found in art, especially in the novel, but also in music, dance and theatre. This is why it seems obvious to think of entertainment as a trivial form of art. But then what does the distinction trivial/not trivial imply? The distinction probably lies in the problematization of information or, to be more precise, in the question as to whether or not the self-reference of the information is also being observed. If it is self-referential, then the information is acknowledged in the recursive network of the work of art, that is, it is related to what the selection of this par- ticular piece of information (and no other) contributes to the play of forms of the work of art. If it is trivial, then the information is merely experienced as a surprise, as a pleasant resolution of indeterminacies that are still open. Accordingly, it is very possible to experience works of art as trivial or to copy them trivially with- out including any reflection of the possibilities excluded by the sequence of information. And this is supported not least by the fact that much entertainment is worked using building blocks which had initially been developed for works of art. 7 One will hardly be able to speak of mutual structural couplings here, since it is not clear how art might benefit from its trivialization as enter- tainment - unless it were in the sense of a drifting towards forms which are progressively less suitable as entertainment, that is, in the sense of a compulsion to insist upon difference. But a depend- ence of entertainment upon the system of art can be observed, along with a more or less broad zone in which the allocation to art or entertainment is unclear and is left to the observer's atti- tude.
A different situation again is encountered in news and reporting. Here, there are clear structural couplings between the media sys- tem and the political system. Politics benefits from 'mentions' in the media and is simultaneously irritated by them (as was Andreotti by Forattini's cartoons). News reports in the media usually demand a response within the political system, and this response generally reappears in the media as commentary. So to a large extent the same communications have at once a political and a mass media relevance. But that only ever applies to isolated events and only ad
? hoc. This is because the further processing of communications takes a quite different route in the political system, especially where con- ditions of democracy and of an opposition in the form of parties exist, from the route it takes in the media, where it becomes a kind of story in instalments. These different networks of recursion ulti- mately imply that those events which might appear to the first- order observer as just one, as a 'political piece of news', are in fact identified quite differently depending on the system in which the identification occurs.
Similar structural couplings can be found in the relationship of media and sport. Other thematic areas (art, science, law) are only relatively marginally affected - law typically being irritated (but only in isolated cases) by a pre-emptive judgement in the media or by a kind of reporting whose consequences can hardly be ignored in the further course of the formation of legal opinion, coming un- der the heading of 'responsibility for consequences'. 8 An exemplary case is the trial for the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles 1992- 3. At any rate, the division of the news portion follows not only a kind of generic logic, but also the types of concerned response which it generates in other systems in society, typically in the form of a system-to-system allocation.
Last but not least, in all the programme strands the mass media do not seem to be aiming to generate a consensual construction of reality - or, if they are, to no avail. Their world contains and repro- duces differences of opinion in plenty. This does not only happen when conflicts are being reported, when suspicions of manipula- tion come to the fore or when purely private views of reality are presented 'live'. The mass media are always also working continu- ously at discrediting themselves. They comment, they dispute, they correct themselves. Topics, not opinions, are decisive. There is so much talk of the 'dying of the forests' that in the end we know that we do not know what the causes are, but we do know that there are a variety of opinions about it. In view of the complexity of topics and contributions, it is not even possible to allocate differ- ences of opinion to fixed pre-given structures, such as class or ideo- logical factions. We just learn to observe the observing and to experience the conflict itself as reality, since differences are to be expected. The more information, the greater the uncertainty and
? the greater too the temptation to assert an opinion of one's own, to identify with it and leave it at that.
What conclusions can theory draw from this description?
We can rule out the possibility that the programme strands named above form their own, operationally closed (! ) function systems. 9 But the idea that all we are talking about in each case is an annexe to other function systems which make use of the mass media as a technical means of dissemination is not particularly convincing ei- ther. This would not take account of the media's own dynamic and their 'constructivist effect'. As an effective form of social communi- cation they cannot simply be reduced to mere technology. Such problems can be avoided if one starts from the assumption that we are dealing with a differentiation of the system of the mass media at the level of its programmes.
This leads to the suggestive idea that the system uses its pro- grammes in order to diversify its relationships to other function systems in society; and it does this at the structural level, because contacts at the operational level are not possible. We are familiar with such arrangements from other function systems. For example, the legal system differentiates its programmes' sources of validity according to judiciary, legislation and contract, in order to be able to keep separate its relationships to itself, to politics and to the economy. 10 And the art system has very different kinds of art (sculp- ture, poetry, music etc. ) depending on which environmental media of perception are being used. In all these cases we find the same difficulty in grasping the system in this differentiation as a unity. The jurists have the problem of grasping 'judges' law' or even the contract as a legal source, and the art system is only described as a system 'of fine arts' at all in the second half of the eighteenth cen- tury, and even then with the dispute, still continuing today, about whether literature is a part of them or not.
The divisions of the mass media into programme strands and then also within the programme strands, make visible the collapse of the order once described as the class society, and contribute for their part to the dissolution of class structures. This does not mean that no more differences of social prominence are conveyed or that a levelling process has set in. But the fractioning of the suggestion of meaning destroys the illusion of a thoroughgoing superiority or
? inferiority of parts of the population. The production of the mass media is not based upon a quasi-feudal class structure, but rather on a complementarity of roles of organizers and sectorally inter- ested members of the audience. This is the way in which the names that are mentioned and the faces shown again and again in politics and in economic life, in sports and in show business are distin- guished. One can see houses and furniture which have obviously been bought and not inherited and which prevent any conclusions being drawn regarding education or influence. Classes based on social origins are thus replaced by fractioned prominence. And all that remains of the mythology of the modern is that an invisible power is at work 'behind all this' - which explains to the viewers why they themselves have not been rewarded in this way. If this is construed and confirmed again and again as social reality, then no power has the power to assert itself against it. Needs are diverted away into that qualitas occulta using simplifying explanations, ena- bling perceived reality to be reduced to a schema of power and victims.
We can summarize this analysis by saying that function systems are identified as a unity at the level of their code, that is, by means of a primary difference, and they differentiate their relations to the environment at the level of their programmes. The difference of coding and programming is simultaneously the difference of iden- tity and difference in the reflection of the system. The extent to which programme differentiation can still occur and remain viable, and the shape this takes, depends on the specific function of the system and on the social conditions of its differentiation.
? 10 Individuals
If, therefore, there is every indication of a differentiation of the programme strands news/in-depth reporting, advertising and en- tertainment, what evidence exists for their coming together in one and the same function system?
Reasons related to printing and broadcasting technologies could be put forward, for the mass media use the same technology in every instance to differentiate themselves from the contexts of in- teraction of everyday life. Further reasons can be found in the in- formation/non-information coding common to all three, and in the function of the system. These are important, but extremely formal, characteristics which shed little light on the meaning of programme type differentiation. The question remains: why like this and not differently?
When seeking an explanation that is more concretely applicable, it becomes apparent that differentiation brings out forms in which modern society makes individual motivational positions available for communication. This explanation presupposes that what is meant by 'motive' is not causal factors operating on a psychic or even neurophysiological level, but rather that it is exclusively a matter of communicative representations, in other words, of how attribution to individuals is dealt with in communication. 1 For com- munication about motives must accept the fact that it cannot really discover and verify the causalities implied. So there can only be talk of the 'reasons' for action which refer explicitly or implicitly to individuals, but which, viewed from an operational perspective,
? are artefacts of social communication and can only contribute as such to generating further communications - whatever the indi- viduals involved might be thinking at the time.
News and in-depth reporting start from the assumption of indi- viduals as cognitively interested observers who only take note of things that are presented to them. At the same time, the media bal- ance this implied passivity by singularizing individual actors being reported on as the cause of their own action. What is thereby regis- tered is that only socially allocated prominence empowers an indi- vidual towards influential action, or, alternatively, some kind of conspicuous, strange, often criminal individual behaviour is in evi- dence. In either case, viewers are implicitly kept from drawing any conclusions about themselves. Their passive role as one among many billions is confirmed for them, as is also, in the case of exceptions, their individuality.
Advertising starts out from the assumption of an individual as a being who calculates his profit. In doing so, it assumes a standard pattern of motives that describes all individuals, one which has proved its worth since the seventeenth century in theories of politi- cal economy and then in the modern monetary economy. These theories have to make abstractions, since in order to explain the economy they need concepts of motives which are able to describe individuals in very different positions in relation to transactions - both as someone who fulfils his desires directly, and as someone who merely receives money; and both as someone who buys and as someone who does not buy and keeps his money or prefers to spend it differently. In spite of its standardization, the motivational posi- tion taken on flatters the individual, because it describes him as the master of his own decisions, as the servant of his own interests alone.
Entertainment is a different matter altogether. Here, the me- dium of narrative fictionality is chosen to individualize motiva- tional positions. Individuals appear here with a biography, wTith problems, with self-generated life situations and sham existences, with a need (understandable to an observer) for suppression, for unconsciousness, for latency. The medium of fictionality has the advantage of being able to bring about or at least allude to con- crete realities, whilst at the same time being able to leave it to the
? readers or viewers whether or not they wish to draw any conclu- sions for themselves or for people known to them. The historical models for this begin as far back as in early modern theatre, then in the modern novel and in the bourgeoisification of narrative cul- ture, and, at the end of these traditions, they feed into the metanarrative of psychoanalysis, into the narrative of the 'economy' (! ) of the household of psychic energy which has to cope, not per- haps with 'debts', but certainly with suppression and disturbances from the subconscious. With this apparatus, the mass media can present offers - 'subject to alteration' - at every level of triviality and refinement, from which individuals can select (as they can from what is offered by advertising) what they need psychically and what they can cope with.
The significance of personal individualization becomes even more clearly visible if one observes the temporal relations of narratives loaded with tension. On the one hand, the people who appear in the narrative gradually come to be known, they have names, they act, one finds out a little about their past. They are individualized through their own history. On the other hand, one still does not know how they will act, especially in situations that are as yet un- familiar and in the face of unknown provocations from others' ac- tions. In people, then, a known or at least knowable past, at any rate one which is unchangeable, encounters an unknown future. People symbolize the unity of the known/unknown schema, inter- preted through the temporal difference of past and future. They thus absorb, as it were, attentiveness to time, they serve as tangible symbols of time. They integrate past and future in their actions, and they have to be individual, that is, distinguishable, so that it becomes visible that this can happen in very different ways. But another aspect of this form of observation of time thereby remains ^explicated, namely, the fact that there might also be quite differ- ent ways of separating and reintegrating the past and the future, for example, by means of organization. Although this does not ex- plain why these different forms of calling individual motives to ac- count in the different programme strands have developed historically, a structure can be recognized. In each case there is an 'interpenetration', that is, a possibility of taking account of the com- plexity of the formation of individual consciousness within social
? communication. 2 And in each case the solution to this problem takes on what is ultimately a paradoxical form. The individual who par- ticipates in communication is, in one way or another, simultane- ously individualized and de-individualized, that is, standardized or fictionalized such that communication can continue to make refer- ence to individuals without being able to include the operations which cause each individual for itself to come into being as a unique, operationally closed system. The differentiated offerings of the mass media allow social communication to be furnished with an ongoing reference to individuals, without having to consider the specificities of other function systems. The media need neither outdo the personalizations of family systems nor the anonymizations of the economic system. Standardizations suffice which are chosen in order to allow the participating individual to determine and select the meaning of his or her participation - or to switch off.
'The person' is therefore implied in all programme strands of the mass media, but not, of course, as a real reproduction of his or her biochemical, immunological, neurobiological and consciousness- related processes, but only as a social construct. The construct of the 'cognitively more or less informed, competent, morally respon- sible person' helps the function system of the mass media constantly to irritate itself with regard to its biological and psychic human environment. 3 Just as in other function systems, this environment remains operationally inaccessible, it cannot be divided up piece by piece, and for precisely this reason must constantly be 'read'. The 'characterization' of people,4 constantly reproduced in the way de- scribed, marks those points on the inside of the system boundaries of the mass media where structural couplings with the human envi- ronment come into effect. The billionfold igniting of psychic events is brought into a form that can be reused within the system and which in turn is psychically readable in the sequence of differences which arise from them. As is always the case with structural coup- lings, these relations are far too complex to be represented in the conceptual terms of linear causality or representation. Nonetheless, they have neither arisen randomly nor can they be modified at whim. The co-evolution of social and psychic systems has taken on forms which reproduce highly complex systems with their own dynamics on both sides and which keep themselves open to further evolution.
? In the system of the mass media this construction of the person reproduces the myth of service to the person. This person is 'in- terested' in information, indeed is dependent upon information in vital ways; so he must be informed. He is morally prone to tempta- tions; so he must constantly be taught the difference between good and bad behaviour. He drifts out of control in the flow of circum- stances; so he must be presented with a range of possible decisions - or, to use the catch-phrase of one media company, 'mental orien- tation'. These meanings have by no means become obsolete now that there are image media as well as print media. But more and more they also serve the fulfilling interpretation of familiar faces (often also of bodies and movements) and names. Although we have too little empirical knowledge about it, this may lead to a simplification and a simultaneous nuancing of the constructs used.
It would be a serious misunderstanding if one were to conceive this 'constructivist' representation of the system/environment prob- lem as pure self-delusion on the part of the mass media. Indeed, this would presuppose that beyond illusion there is still a reality to which one could reach out. It is, if anything, a successful attempt at keeping self-reference and other-reference in harmony under very strict system-specific conditions.
? The Construction of Reality
We now return to the main problem of this treatise, to the ques- tion of the construction of the reality of the modern world and of its social system. In everyday life one normally assumes that the world is as it is, and that differences of opinion are a result of different 'subjective' perspectives, experiences, memories. 1 Mod- ern, post-theological science has reinforced this assumption and has tried to support it methodologically. Whereas the natural sci- ences of this century placed a question mark over it, the social sciences still seem to be on the lookout for 'the' reality, even when they speak of 'chaos theory' and suchlike, and to allow only for a historically, ethnically or culturally conditioned relativism. 2 For research to go on at all, some kind of 'object' has to be presumed, so the argument goes, to which the research refers; otherwise one is always talking about everything and nothing at the same time. But in order to meet this objection, is it not enough to assume that the system has a memory?
In that case, then, it cannot only be the system of science that guarantees the materialization of reality for society. Instead, we should think of the knowledge of the world that the system of the mass media produces and reproduces. The question now goes: which description of reality do the mass media generate if one has to as- sume that they are active in all three programme strands? And if one were able to reach an opinion about that, the next question would immediately present itself: which society emerges when it routinely and continuously informs itself about itself in this way?
? If we ask about commonalities in the process of selection, we initially come up against the widespread assumption of a standard 0r normative prior selection. This is where Talcott Parsons, for example, saw the condition for the possibility of actions and sys- tems of action. Of course, we should not reject this possibility out of hand, but it explains too little; it would work too coarsely, be too easily recognizable and it would soon provoke opposing cri- teria. There are other forms of selection which work in more hid- den ways and are simultaneously unavoidable. This is true of categorizations of every kind, that is, for the representation of con- crete facts in more general terms, and it is true of causal attribu- tion, that is, for the co-representation of causes and/or of effects of each phenomenon being dealt with. Just as meaning is only ever communicable in the context of generalizations which can, of course, vary between being relatively concrete and relatively general, so also causality can only be represented by singling out particular causes or particular effects. In the case of causal attributions, it is by no means only an issue of leaky assumptions in comparison with other, equally possible explanations. Instead, the selection also necessarily excludes any causes of the causes and effects of the ef- fects.