No More Learning

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. 3 The perspective from which the issue is illuminated can be varied according to ideological or normative prejudices, but even with the most strenuous efforts at neutrality it is unavoidable, given conflicts of values with which we are familiar. Conflicts of opinion negotiated in the mass media therefore operate frequently with di- verse causal attributions and thereby lend themselves the appear- ance of a compact relationship to facts which can no longer be unpicked. The same is true the other way around, however (and this is perhaps the more common instance), where simplifying causal attributions generate judgements, emotions, calls, protests. Both apply to news and in-depth reports, but also to the staging of nar- ratives and to a kind of advertising which, where causality is con- cerned (if it is mentioned at all), only mentions things which speak m its favour.
Generally speaking - and this is just as true of interaction among those co-present as it is of mass media communication - we can say that the economy and speed of communication always require a reference to complexes of meaning (to 'Gestalts', as in Gestalt
? psychology) and that communication can therefore never recover the meaning which it lets receivers understand, so that it is not usually possible to work out which elements are attributable to information and which to utterance. And this ultimately means that whilst the suspicion of prejudices or manipulation is constantly re- produced, it can never really be eliminated in communication by a corresponding distinction.
Any more precise analysis and empirical research in particular will surely have to start from that part of the media which provides the most direct portrayal of reality and is indeed declared and per- ceived in this way: news and in-depth reporting. Here the selectors named above take effect, especially those which are geared towards discontinuity and conflict. If we conceive of such selectors as two- sided forms, it becomes apparent that the other side, their anto- nym, remains unilluminated. In the representation of society it is the breaks in particular which appear then - whether along the temporal axis or in the sphere of the social. Conformity and assent, repetition of the same experience over and over, and constancy of the framing context remain correspondingly underexposed. Unrest is preferred to peace for reasons to do with the media designers' professional skills. The fact that this particular axis and not some other is chosen for the self-description of society is curious, and when it is chosen, it is barely possible to opt for any side other than 'where the action is'. It is with this kind of self-observation that society stimulates itself into constant innovation. It generates 'prob- lems', which require 'solutions', which generate 'problems' which require 'solutions'. This is precisely how it also reproduces topics which the mass media can pick up on and transform into informa- tion.
This one-sidedness can be compensated for by the mass media themselves, by way of preference for moral judgements. In the United States context, the result of this tele-socialization has been charac- terized as 'moral intelligence'. This includes the call to defend oneself against circumstances, to stand firm in the face of difficul- ties and if need be to break rules. 4 But ultimately it has to be clear who are the goodies and who are the baddies. Whatever is not shown to advantage as reality is offered up as morality, it is de- manded. Accordingly, consensus is better than dissent, conflicts
? should be capable of being resolved (since it is, after all, only a question of values), and the reference to reality, oriented princi- pally towards quantities (where possible more, and not less, of the aood), should be neutralized by the 'question of meaning'. It then looks as though it were the very essence of morality to opt for peace, for balance, for solidarity, for meaning. However, seen from a historical and empirical perspective, this is by no means the case. There are no reasons whatever intrinsic to morality why struggles against enemies, in-group and out-group distinctions, dissent should not also be morally rewarded in relation to other kinds of atti- tudes. 5 Here too the mass media seem to determine the way in which the world is read, and to assign moral perspectives to this descrip- tion. The emphasis, marked by tones of regretful loss, on consen- sus, solidarity, values, the search for meaning, does not appear until the second half of the nineteenth century, in a time of the mass press and the full inclusion of the underclasses in literacy, as a kind of pasteurization of the totality of society - or of what it is thought to be.
One might suppose that this overpowering insistence on moral- ity is connected with the coding information/non-information or with the one-sided presentation of forms whose other side, although presupposed, is not represented along with it - in other words, with the concealment of unobtrusive normality, with the paradox of the other, included in meaning but included as being excluded. In normal everyday interaction, after all, morality is not needed anyway; it is always a symptom of the occurrence of pathologies. Instead of orienting itself towards givens, communication chooses the form of morality as something which is simultaneously both fact and not-fact, as something which has constantly to be subject to reminder, as something that is lacking and can therefore be as- signed neither to the inside nor to the outside. Once the transition, the diversion towards morality, is achieved, it carries on as if of its own accord, as if on castors, sometimes too quickly. Morality, then, serves as a kind of supplement to selectivity, offered by way of compensation, as Odo Marquard describes it, that is, 'instead'. 6
This might explain that morality and even its reflexive form, ethics, makes an aged, furrowed impression nowadays and is clearly in- terested only in pathological cases. Isolated cases thus mount up
? under catchwords such as 'corruption', and we can only confirm what Jean Paul suspected long ago: 'Angels may still fall and the devils multiply. '7 Morality needs the obviously scandalous in order to have occasion to rejuvenate itself ; it needs the mass media and, specifically, television.
Even if this is a balance which equalizes out within itself, it is based on a highly selective schema. Reality is described - quite pos- sibly in the mode of researched truth - in a way that is felt to be in need of being balanced. The continual reproduction of the 'is' is set against how things 'actually ought to be'. Party opposition, which is provided for institutionally and enables the political system to substitute government for opposition, is represented so strongly in the daily news that the continuous values of the domain for which politics is responsible come across as deficient and have to be sub- ject to reminder. The 'political class' (as is dismissively said of late) fails in the face of the great tasks of the age. The hunt for more money, better career values, greater reputation, higher ratings, bet- ter-quality training courses appears to be so dominant that, as in evolution, the recessive factor 'meaning of life' has to be brought back into play via morality. But deficits in reality, even if they are imaginary ones, cannot be balanced out in the normative. If a topic is treated in moral terms, the impression is given that the topic requires it because real reality is different.
The description of society that happens via news and in-depth reporting, though, is not the only one to take effect. Both advertis- ing and entertainment contribute as well, mediated as they are by individual attitudes and degrees of willingness to communicate, in other words in a very indirect way. Advertising inevitably scatters its communication over so many objects and so many receivers that each has the impression that there is something better and more beautiful than they can achieve for themselves. The limits to what can be achieved are no longer experienced as divinely ordained tri- als and tribulations, and neither are they regulated by rigid class barriers that set a framework restricting with whom and in what respect one can meaningfully compare oneself. The religious and stratificatory regulation of conflicts of imitation in Girard's sense no longer apply.
8 Instead, limitations are experienced as the result of a lack of purchasing power. This might initially be an impres-
? sion which irritates individual systems of consciousness and is proc- essed within these systems of consciousness in highly diverse ways depending upon the system concerned. But since what is involved
r e massive and standardized influences, one can assume that the conditions of plausibility of social communication are also influ- enced in this way. As it is, in order to be able to enter into commu- nication, individuals have to assume that there are similarities of experience between them and others in spite of their systems of consciousness operating in fully individualized, idiosyncratic ways. The global dissolution of agrarian-artisan family economies and the increased dependency on money for the satisfaction of every need offers an experiential background which readily takes up the range of presentations offered by the media. Society then appears to be an order in which money is available in vast quantities - but no one has enough of it. What could be more obvious than to infer unjust distribution? 9 And then explanations are demanded along with proposals as to how it could all be changed.
Entertainment via the mass media might also be expected to af- fect in this indirect manner what is constructed as reality. Over a long period of time, at any rate during the seventeenth and eight- eenth centuries, the reading of novels was treated as a distraction, a diversion, and its only danger was considered to be that it made one unfit for an active life. 10 The prototype was Don Quixote, and, time and again, women at risk from reading novels. 11 It was al- ready a common topos in critiques of novelistic reading matter that the division of real reality and fictional reality was not being main- tained; but precisely this point was reflected again within the novel and was set up in contrast to an authentic relation to the world, as if it were not precisely thus that one ran the risk of advising the reader by means of such reading matter that he or she should en- deavour to be authentic. 12
These problems have become more acute with film and televi- sion, and even the diagnostic novel (unlike the experiments of the avant garde) seems to be aimed at suggesting to the reader that certain experiences are his own. Whoever gives himself over to this is then able to communicate as if he knew this himself. The differ- ence of the inside and outside of fiction, the difference of a narra- tive or a film story on the one hand and an author, machinery of
? publication and receivers on the other, is undermined by a constant crossing of the boundary. The one side is copied over into the other, out of which opportunities for communication are won whose ba- sis is the artificiality of the experiences common to both. Complex entanglements of real reality and fictional reality occur,13 which are, however, reflected as entertainment, experienced as an episode and remain without consequence. The more 'that which is per- ceived', say, television, plays a role in this, the more communica- tion is based on implicit knowledge which cannot even be communicated. Whereas the Enlightenment assumed that commonality consists in a communicable interest based on reason, and whereas transcendental theory even implied that self-reference could be extrapolated as a general a priori of subjectivity,14 com- munication today seems to be borne by a visual knowledge no longer capable of being controlled subjectively, whose commonality owes itself to the mass media and is carried along by their fashions. It can more or less become a programming consideration on the part of the entertainment industry to win and keep the (short) attention span of participants by offering them references back to their own life, or, one might say, 'yes, that's exactly it' experiences. The at- tempt to approach the individuality of individuals' own conscious- ness will then be made by way of programme diversification.
The fact that mass media produce those three programme strands of news/in-depth reporting, advertising and entertainment simulta- neously with very different kinds of reality construction makes it difficult to recognize any overall effect and to trace it back to the system of the mass media. Perhaps the most important common trait running through them is that, in the process of producing in- formation, the mass media simultaneously set up a horizon of self- generated uncertainty which has to be serviced with ever more information. Mass media increase society's capacity for irritation and thus also its ability to produce information. 15 Or, to be more precise: they increase the complexity of contexts of meaning in which society exposes itself to irritation through self-produced differences. The capacity for irritation, it will be remembered, is generated by horizons of expectation which may provide expectations of nor- mality but which in isolated cases can be shattered by coincidences, incidents, accidents; or by spots of indeterminacy,1' which are re-
? produced as being constantly in need of completion. What is hap- pening in each case is autopoiesis - the reproduction of communi- cation from outcomes of communication.
For this (as for any) autopoiesis there is neither a goal nor a natural end. Rather, informative communications are autopoietic elements which serve the reproduction of just such elements. With each operation, discontinuity, surprise, pleasant or unpleasant dis- appointment is reproduced. And the structures which are repro- duced in this process and which tie it to what is known and capable of repetition (otherwise information could not be recognized as difference) simultaneously serve its reproduction and are adapted for it in the meanings they hold. Thus time becomes the dominat- ing dimension of meaning, and in this dimension the distinction of future and past becomes that distinction which defines time, start- ing with the before/after distinction. The connection between past and future is now nothing but an artificially arranged chronometry - and nothing more than would be necessary or impossible in terms of its natural essence. The present - the differential of the two tem- poral horizons which itself is neither future nor past - becomes the place where information solidifies and decisions have to be made. But the present is in itself only this point of change or only the position of the observer distinguishing future and past. It does not occur within time. One might suppose that it takes the paradox of a time which is no time from what was thought of before moder- nity as eternity, as the omnipresence of the God who observes all times at the same time. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that this modalization of time has a retroactive effect on communi- cation itself, above all in the dual form of fears and expectations.
We can take it that whatever people know about society and therefore about the world - and especially whatever can be com- municated with some prospect of being understood - comes about in this way. But thematically this does not say very much - apart perhaps from the fact that every statement draws the suspicion upon itself of wanting to say too much. It would not be enough to speak of a universal suspicion of ideology here,17 as even every scientifi- cally supported assertion is subject to the same suspicion as soon as it projects itself as an ontological assertion. But perhaps one can say that the mode of second-order observation has generally set-
? tied into place. Everything that is uttered is deciphered in terms of the one who utters it. News and in-depth reporting is likely to en- courage suspicions of underlying motives (which rarely take on any definite form), while entertainment encourages self-observation in the second-order mode, observation of one's own observing. Both the world and individuality are still perceived even then as a con- crete whole consisting of common characteristics; but always in such a way that one has mentally to include an observer w h o says that this is the way it is.
What is at issue here is no longer the old ontological duality of appearance and reality, which was thought of in principle as being ontologically separable or which as religion made reference to the hidden God. Rather, what is at issue is an understanding of reality which takes reality to be a two-sided form of the 'what' and the 'how' - of the 'what is being observed' and the 'how it is being observed'. And this corresponds precisely to the observation of communication with regard to a difference of information and ut- terance. Only when one takes this difference as a basis can one un- derstand anything - and "understand" is used here in the sense of endless possibilities for further exploration on the side of informa- tion or on the side of schemata (frames) and the utterer's motives.
Of course, all this is not to maintain that every participant in mass media communication reflects that he is experiencing thus. But neither is it a matter of a reserve for the 'educated classes'. Every empirical study will establish that there are different degrees to which this ambiguity of knowledge is processed, and the most easily accessible irritation may assume the form of mistrust. What- ever the psyche makes of this form of irritation is its own business; and an additional part of the picture is that there is no prescribed rule for this which would not immediately invite the same mistrust. Under these circumstances, it is only the conditions of communica- tion that can have a restricting effect. Only a little of what goes on in the consciousness can irritate communication. This will deter- mine the forms of intimacy which are still possible - that feeling of having been left all alone under precisely those conditions which make the opposite a possibility. But this too is reflected a thousand times over in the mass media,18 and thus itself becomes a knowl- edge which we owe to reading and to film.
? The reality of the mass media is the reality of second-order ob- servation. It replaces knowledge prescriptions which have been pro- vided in other social formations by excellent positions of observation: by sages, priests, the nobility, the city, by religion or bv politically and ethically distinguished ways of life. The differ- ence is so stark that one can speak neither of decline nor of progress. Here too the only mode of reflection remains that of second-order observation, that is, the observation that a society which leaves its self-observation to the function system of the mass media enters into precisely this way of observing in the mode of observation of observers.
The result of this analysis can be summed up under the term culture. Since its emergence at the end of the eighteenth century, this term has brought together reflexive and comparative compo- nents. In every last detail, culture knows and says of itself that it is culture. It fashions its own historically or nationally comparative distinctions - first with gestures of superiority for one's own cul- ture in comparison with others, and nowadays with more of an open, casual admission that cultures are many and varied. Even i f - and especially if - this variety exists, one might as well stick with one's own. The fashionable option of cultural diversity legitimates both a conservative basic attitude towards one's own culture and a merely touristic relationship to the others.
Culture in exactly this sense, culture in the sense of the reshaping of everything and anything into a sign of culture, is at once product and alibi of the mass media. Although one usually finds the oppos- ing theory, that the mass media and, in association with it, tourism ruin authentic culture, this is merely an inversion of reality, a mere protective assertion or perhaps a rhetoric which encourages one to search (in vain) for authentic experiences and which complements mass media information by means of tourism, museum visits, for- eign dance groups and suchlike. These kinds of 'supplements' in turn, however, only lead one into culturally aware, that is, staged worlds. 19 The marking of the difference between what one knows from the mass media and what one has really seen (and photo- graphed) right there on the spot, that is, of the difference between tele-tourism and real tourism, is itself a product of the mass media, through which they make themselves invisible as the ground of
? culture. The strange expression 'sightseeing' was introduced at the same time as photography and the rotary press. Without reproduc- tions there would be no originals, without mass media culture would not be recognizable as culture. And the fact that this reflexive cul- ture, this culture which knows itself as culture, produces its coun- ter-conceptuality of 'authenticity', 'actual-ness', 'spontaneity' etc. , just serves to confirm that what is involved here is a universal phe- nomenon which includes self-reference.
Let it be added at this point that this is not the same as asserting that culture has become a commodity in the form of signs. Such theories confuse system references. It goes without saying that peo- ple have to pay for newspapers and cinema visits, for tourism and sightseeing;20 but in this respect this operational domain remains a market, a part of the economic system. As such it is distinguished from other markets, other services, other products. Particular ex- periences and communications only become culture by being of- fered as signs of culture, and it is this that goes back to the institutionalization of second-order observation in the system of the mass media.
The mass media, with their continuous production of construc- tions of reality, undermine the understanding of freedom that is still prevalent. Freedom is still understood as the absence of coer- cion, as in natural law. Both liberal and socialist ideologies have used this concept of freedom and have quarrelled only over the sources of coercion - the state under the rule of law or capitalist society. The social 'innocence' of the mass media, their harmless- ness, is based on the fact that they coerce no one. This is true of all their programme strands, and especially so of advertising. In fact, however, freedom is based on the cognitive conditions of observa- tion and description of alternatives with an open, decidable, and therefore unknown future. Openness for other possibilities is con- structed into the way of the world which actually is determined (meaning simply: it is the way it is). Psychic and social systems empower themselves to choose. But this presupposes a recursively stabilized network of redundancies, that is, memory. We know that people can only fly in aircraft and not, for example, on magic car- pets. So the constructions of reality offered by the mass media have far-reaching effects on what can be observed as freedom in society,
? and in particular also on the question of how opportunities for personally attributable action are distributed in society. If we still define freedom as the absence of coercion, this function of the mass media to constitute freedom remains latent, or at least it is not discussed. One can only suppose that the mass media lead to an overestimation of others' freedom, whereas each individual is only too aware of the cognitive barriers to the amount of freedom he or she has. And this disbalancing of the attribution of freedom may have far more consequences in a society which at all levels has vastly expanded the scope for making decisions and has generated corre- sponding uncertainties, than the question of who definitively is be- ing forced to engage or not to engage in a particular action.
? The Reality of Construction
Every constructivist theory of cognition will find itself facing the objection that it does not do justice to reality, and this one is no different. In the traditional schema of human capacities, knowl- edge was distinguished from will, and only the will was acknowl- edged to have freedom of self-determination (capriciousness). Knowledge, on the other hand, was held to be subject to the resist- ance of reality and could not simply proceed in an arbitrary way without thereby failing to fulfil its function. However, this division of labour is already flawed inasmuch as from an empirical point of view there is no such thing as arbitrariness, and even self-determi- nation (autonomy) is only possible in a system which distinguishes itself from the environment and, whilst not being determined by its environment, is certainly irritated by it. But then the question as to how we are to understand the resistance with which reality con- fronts both knowledge and wanting only becomes more urgent. And if we wanted to relinquish the concept of resistance as an indi- cator of reality, we would have to do without the concept of reality or, breaking with tradition, develop a totally different concept of reality.
But that is not necessary. Hegel himself dealt with this problem in his Phenomenology of Spirit, in the chapter entitled 'Sense-Cer- tainty',1 but at that point he still thought the problem could be solved by the ultra-potency of the mind. All that has remained of this is the deferability (differance) of every distinction and with it the capacity of every construction to be deconstructed. At the same
? time, however, linguistics for its part offers an adequate adapta- tion of the concept of reality which, mutatis mutandis, we can adopt for a theory of social communication and therefore also for a theory of the mass media. Put briefly, it goes like this: resistance to lan- guage can only be put up by language itself and as a consequence, in so far as language is the point at issue, language itself generates its indicators of reality. 2 This is none other than what we have al- ready formulated using the concept of 'Eigenvalues'. The same would be true for the degree of alertness in conscious thought or tor the brain's neurophysiological mode of operation. All opera- tionally closed systems have to generate their indicators of reality at the level of their own operations; they have no other alternative. Resistance can then crop up internally as a problem of consistency, which is interpreted as memory, for example, even though it al- ways only manifests in the moment and has to be newly actualized time and again.
The more presuppositions upon which the operational closure of a system is based (that is, the more improbable from an evolu- tionary perspective), the more demanding and specific its tests of reality will turn out to be. This applies spectacularly to modern science. And it applies equally to the system of the mass media. We have already identified the mechanism used here. It consists in opin- ions about circumstances and events themselves being treated as events. This is how the system allows new blood to flow in; this it does in a way that is in precise correspondence with the system's code and its mode of operation. In this way the system itself is able to generate resistance to its own habits. It can produce 'changes in values', it can give preference to minority opinions that push them- selves to the fore, perhaps especially because they appear as spec- tacular, full of conflict, deviant, and therefore trigger the 'spiral of silence' identified by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. 3 So there are very many different individual possibilities, but they all basically lead to the media generating resistance to themselves.
A further possibility for testing the mass media's construction of reality lies in empirical social research. In contrast to what is widely assumed, the point of this kind of research lies less in the core do- main of scientific research, that is, in the verification and falsifica- tion of theories,4 and more in obtaining data as documentation for
? decisions in politics and the economy, or perhaps in correcting stereo- types which have developed and become established through the mass media's news and reporting - for instance, about the demotivation and 'drop-out' trend among youth at the end of the 1960s, or about the extent of discontent among the population living in the states of the former East Germany. The intention of making visible long-term changes (or even just fluctuations) which escape the attention of the mass media should also be acknowl- edged in this context. Special credit is due here to the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research; one gathers that no German university wanted to take on the burden of continuing this research. But even if one takes account of the independence of this research with due respect, it can only have an effect if the mass media take up its findings. Ultimately, then, it is the self-correction of an op- erationally closed system that is at issue in this instance as well.
Here too, being awarded the 'reality' seal of quality can only happen in a system which first generates inconsistencies in order then to construct whatever is to be taken as reality. This can be corroborated by biological epistemology, semiotics, linguistics and even sociology - and all these are empirical sciences (not arts! ). However, at the same time, this radical constructivism does not go very far, being limited by the realization that, at the level of first- order observation, illusion and reality and therefore also real real- ity and imaginary reality cannot be distinguished from one another. (Logicians would probably have to say: at this level, the systems do not have sufficient logical values at their disposal. ) Although it is possible to see through this illusion and represent it, it cannot be removed in a way that would mean it no longer occurred. And even second-order observation has to attribute reality to the ob- server whom it is observing. It can select him, but not invent him. This is simply because every observation has to work with the dis- tinction of self-reference and other-reference and must fill the func- tional position that is other-reference with some kind of content. To put it differently: it must use this distinction as its blind spot, for it cannot see (observe, describe) the fact that this distinction owes its existence to the paradox of re-entry.
Whereas subject-based epistemologies had already spoken of an inaccessible outside world but had foundered on the problem of
? the plurality of subjects, operational constructivism is based on the recursivity of its own systemic operations and, linked to this, on the system's memory which constantly applies tests of consistency to all the system's operations as they occur (without relating any of these to a 'subject', an author, an I). If you have guests and you give them wine, you will not suddenly be struck by the notion that the glasses are unrecognizable things in themselves and might only ex- ist as a subjective synthesis. Rather, you will think: if there are guests and if there is wine, then there must also be glasses. Or if vou receive a phone call and the person on the other end of the satellite turns nasty, you're not going to say to him: what do you want, anyway, you're only a construct of this telephone conversa- tion! You will not say this, because it can be assumed that the com- munication itself is carrying out tests of consistency and that it can be predicted how the communication will react to such unusual contributions.
The weak spot along the continuum of perception that is the world is, of course, thought, just as theory is the weak spot along the continuum of communication that is the world. For, at the level of thought and of theory formation, tests of consistency can lead to opposing outcomes. Both neurophysiology and language research force one to accept operationally closed systems, that is, opera- tional constructivism. But then one also has to see that perceptions and communications are dependent upon externalities and do not therefore include information which denies the existence of an out- side world. Individual participants' own autopoietic self-reproduc- tion in terms of life and consciousness is by no means called into doubt. On the contrary, it only becomes conceivable as the envir- onment of the autopoietic social system in its autonomy. The 'I' as the central phantom of recursivity of experience and action still lives from the body as the ground of all perception; but it finds itself additionally enriched and confused by what it knows through the mass media.
All this is also true of the reality of the mass media. Here too it is operationally not possible - and this can be known - to include the selectivity of published information in the recursivity of social com- munication. We react much as did Horatio, whom we have already quoted: 'So have I heard, and do in part believe it. '5 We might well
? doubt one or two details and each might find opportunities to enter into communication with particular opinions. But communication in the social system cannot exclude the framework of tests of con- sistency, recursivity. If it did, it would lose almost all daily neces- sary meaning.
The controversy surrounding constructivist theories of cognition becomes much less clear-cut when the complexity of the issues is elucidated and a plurality of distinctions is attached to it accord- ingly. Sociology and social theory in particular thus gain the ad- vantage of no longer having to rely upon the dogma of classical epistemologies. Instead they are able to seek out the ways and means in which reality is constructed and used as an experience of resist- ance in every place where autopoietic, operationally closed systems come into being. And the same goes for the domain of the mass media.
Perhaps the most important outcome of these considerations is that the mass media may generate reality, but a reality not subject to consensus. They leave the illusion of a cognitively accessible re- ality untouched. 'Radical constructivism' is indeed correct with its theory that no cognitive system, whether it operates as conscious- ness or as a system of communication, can reach its environment operationally. For its own observations it must keep to the distinc- tions it has itself made and thus to the distinction of self-reference and other-reference; and this is not only true for the system of the mass media itself, but also for all psychic and social systems that are irritated by it. But at the same time, it is also true that no cogni- tive system can do without assumptions about reality. For, if all cognition were held to be cognition's own construction and were traced to the way in which the distinction of self-reference and other- reference was handled, this distinction itself would appear para- doxical and would collapse. Other-reference would be merely a variant of self-reference. The idea of reality secures the autopoiesis of cognitive operations by its own ambivalence. It could either be an illusion or the 'reality principle' as psychiatry has it. 6 Either way, what remains important is that in its cognitive operations the sys- tem is forced, not all the time but only in certain instances, to dis- tinguish between the environment as it really is and the environment as it (the system) sees it.
? And what would be the exceptions? It seems to be the case that here in modern society, which secures its knowledge of the world through mass media, a change has come about. According to the classical model of the rationality of truth with its logical and onto- logical premises, it was only a question of ensuring that errors were avoided. The reasons for error played either no role at all or only a secondary one, namely, only when one wanted to avoid repeating the same error. It was assumed in principle that the error could be corrected at the point where it occurred, and the method recom- mended for this was specifically intended to neutralize the influ- ence of individual characteristics of systems seeking cognition. Provision for correcting errors was built into communication. For the modern world after Descartes and after Freud, this is no longer enough. The cognitive system that we now call 'subject' might infer self-confirmation from every cognition (be it true or untrue), be- cause in the end this is how it confirms its autopoiesis. But it is just this which no longer leads directly to confirmation of the reality value of the knowledge. Self-correcting mechanisms are comple- mented by self-accusing mechanisms. This happens with concepts such as 'projection' or with the highly fragile distinction of normal and pathological. Expanding the suspicion of motives in this way tendentially leads to a self-psychiatrization of communication. As has long been recognized, this includes the communication of psy- chiatrists or other therapists who are at risk of succumbing to their professional deformation. The distinction of normal and patho- logical does not say clearly where the boundaries are to be drawn. The fragility of this distinction, its capacity to be transferred into ever new terrains of suspicion, exactly reflects the functionally nec- essary ambivalence of the understanding of reality. Psychiatry it- self cannot do without a reality somehow guaranteed by the world; otherwise it would have to cease its own activity. In other words, it cannot really accept that it is simply pursuing its own projections with the assumption of pathologies. At the very least it will have to accept that there are more and less painful pathologies. 7
The distinction of a world not subject to consensus, one that can be touched on individually, could be a third solution to this prob- lem, and it seems that this is precisely the solution offered and dis- seminated by the mass media. One must simply be able to accept
? one's own way of looking at reality - and be able to distinguish. One must just beware of believing that it is generally valid, that it is reality per se.