No More Learning

This theoretical description is designed in the mode of second- order observation. It observes and describes observers. But it does
? not presuppose that the mass media observe themselves in the mode of second-order observation. The media designate what they are communicating about and must therefore distinguish it. For exam- ple, they inform people about scandals and in doing so must pre- suppose that non-scandalous behaviour would have been possible as well. What is not reflected here, however, is that one could pose the question (which a sociologist might pose) why something is even being observed in the schema scandalous/non-scandalous at all, and why the frequency of use of this schema is clearly increas- ing. In other words, the media remain (for good reason, as we shall presently see) invisible to themselves as an observer. They are turned towards the world in their operations and do not reflect that this turning itself generates an unmarked space in which they find them- selves.
We can reformulate this statement by splitting our concept of autonomy. First, there is autopoietic autonomy which is based on operational closure and means that the system can only reproduce its own structures and operations with its own operations, that is, from its own products. This is to be distinguished from cognitive closure, and, correspondingly, cognitive autonomy. This says that along with all its cognitions the system is also observing that these are only its own observations. Only having reached this point do we find ourselves on the terrain in which second-order cybernetics in the strict sense is interested. 2 Here, the question 'who is the ob- _ server? ' is asked universally and is also applied to the observing system. Questions about the observer take the place of questions about reasons, which would necessarily result in an infinite regress. And therefore, whoever wishes to give reasons for his own experi- ence or actions must observe himself as an observer and, in doing so, allow access to the choice of the distinctions which guide his observing. But how is that possible?
Obviously, from an empirical point of view, the system of the mass media does not operate at the cognitively closed level of sec- ond-order cybernetics. It does distinguish self-reference and other- reference. In its attitude of other-reference it reports on facts and opinions. This includes the possibility of observing observers. The second-order observation common in modern society comes about in this respect. But this merely leads into the infinite regress of the
? question as to which observer is observing this. In the system itself, there is no final figure of the ambiguous 'observing system',3 no autological realization that whatever is true for observers is also true for the system which is observing them. Thanks to the distinc- tion of self-reference and other-reference, the system of the mass media can also mark itself in contrast to everything else. It can make its own structures and operations into a topic as though they were objects. But it does not additionally ask: how am I operating as an observer and why do I make distinctions in this way and not another? With every distinction it uses it places itself in the unob- served, unmarked space, and this is even so when it marks itself in contrast to other things. Every distinction makes the observer in- visible - but this is precisely what we can still know. If she wanted to de-invisibilize herself, she would have to mark herself, that is, distinguish herself. And then one would again have the question, who is the observer who distinguishes thus and not otherwise?
This is also true of modern society, and also in conditions which some people describe as 'postmodern'. It even applies if one re- nounces absolute demands for validity which in the tradition went under names such as God or nature or reason. This renunciation is presented as relativism or historicism. One accepts the contingency of all criteria and of all possible observer positions. But that only means that one is able to switch from any distinction to another, that, for example, one can take into account fashions or transfor- mations of values. In fact, these are now accepted schemata. The problem of transformation and of contingency has been digested and can be expressed with the normal schematisms of the mass media. The system may then be operating at a level of greater un- certainty, but that is also true of the other function systems, of the money economy, art, science, politics. In accepting this character- istic postmodern style the mass media are merely following what the form of social differentiation suggests. But with a constant change of perspectives, the observer who is performing this trans- formation with the before/after distinction still cannot be grasped. 'God is dead', they said - and meant: the last observer cannot be identified.
As a reaction to this finding, attempts have been evident for some years now to shift the problem onto ethics. This is true throughout
? society and thus also in the mass media. For example, a code of ethics for journalists can be drawn up and the attempt made to apply it via the profession's self-regulatory procedures. The fact that this cannot be an ethics of reasoning in the academic style is easy to see if one follows the academic debate about transcendental ethics, utilitarian ethics or value ethics. In none of these cases have radical deductive steps towards decisions succeeded. We can know this. Therefore, these can only be conventions which continually find themselves confronted with new situations. Nor does this eth- ics, if it is not condensed into norms of law, contain any indication of how deviants are to be treated.
The position of a second-order cybernetics offers an opportunity to reflect this flight into ethics as a displacement of the problem. After all, whatever else it is understood to be in concrete terms, ethics too is a distinguishing practice. It distinguishes standards and ways of behaving, it distinguishes conforming and deviant be- haviour and usually even in a moral sense good and bad, or evil, behaviour. Moreover, it is a part of its presuppositions that devia- tions are attributed to behaviour and not to inappropriately cho- sen standards or, as critical sociologists thought for a while, to 'labelling'. 4 Even if strong ties and highly charged emotions are to be expected in heavily moralized domains, second-order cybernet- ics can still ask: why are you distinguishing in this way and not in another? Or again: who is the observer who is trying to impose these schemata here?
Standard authors of constructivist epistemology, such as Humberto Maturana and Heinz von Foerster, have attempted to develop a new ethics on this basis. However, they have not gone beyond making a few suggestions,5 and it is doubtful whether this venture can succeed. For an ethics would sabotage itself if what was demanded of it was that it make distinctions and simultane- ously reflect that it is itself making these distinctions.
Even in the face of numerous efforts to find ethical foundations, second-order cybernetics can only ever repeat the question: who is the observer? It can direct this question to every observing system, and therefore also to itself. Every cognitive, normative and moral - and therefore also every ethical - code is thus undermined. This might lead one to deny second-order cybernetics any practical rel-
? evance or possibility of being implemented empirically. But we should guard against reaching foregone conclusions. It is notice- able that in praxis-oriented efforts which understand themselves as therapy, this second-order cybernetics is playing an increasingly significant role. This is obviously true of family therapy and or- ganizational consultancy. Equally, though, one might think of psy- chotherapies or of cases in which pain cannot be controlled medically and the advice given is: observe your pain. Along with constructivist concepts of therapy, then, a practicable directive has been discov- ered which is formulated with the concept of paradox. 6 The rhe- torical tradition has already recommended the figure of the paradox as a technique for shattering ingrained belief, communis opinio, common sense. This description of function can now be linked to second-order cybernetics and thus also grounded epistemologically. One always has the possibility of asking after the observer, but this question, when applied to itself, amounts to a paradox, an injunc- tive paradox. It calls for something to be made visible which must remain invisible to itself. It contradicts itself. It executes a perfor- mative self-contradiction and thus avoids appearing dogmatic or prescribing cures.
By leading us back to the paradox of the observer,7 second-order cybernetics overcomes the distinction of 'critical' and 'affirmative' still common amongst sociologists and intellectuals. This too is a distinction, that is, an instrument of observing. If we observe the one who with the aid of this distinction opts for the one side (and not for the other), a further version of the observer paradox emerges. Whoever opts for 'critical' (as do most intellectuals) must have an affirmative attitude towards the distinction itself. Whoever opts for 'affirmative' must accept a distinction which also allows one to adopt a critical attitude. This is why observers who choose this distinction must remain invisible. At best, they can say: I am the paradox of my distinction, the unity of what I claim is different.
The paradox offers the observer exactly the same concentration on a single point that cannot be condensed any further as does an autological, second-order cybernetics that includes itself. This it- self suggests the theory that second-order cybernetics lends the form of a paradox to what its observing observes. This does not have to mean that we leave the matter there. As the theory and practice of
? systems therapy teach us, the form of the paradox is only a stop- ping-off place. The distinctions we have been used to up to now, with the question of the observer, are identified as paradoxical, they are driven back to the question of the unity of the difference, in order then to have the question posed, which other distinctions are able to 'unravel' the paradox, to resolve it again. Treated thus, the paradox is a temporal form whose other side forms an open future, a new arrangement and a new description of habits as ques- tionable. As also in autopoiesis, there is no final form which, either as origin or as goal, does not allow the question of the 'before' and the 'afterwards'. One can feel free to make suggestions; but if one wants to handle the position of second-order cybernetics consist- ently, these can only be initial ideas for further thought. The pri- mary goal would have to be to teach clients to see the paradox inherent in all distinctions for themselves and also to see that ob- servations are possible only when the paradoxes are brought back into the form of a distinction that seems convincing at the time.
If sociology takes up the position of a second-order observation cybernetics, it does not renounce communication, but it will have to send its communication via the diversion of paradoxy - like a therapist. The stark contradiction between the selection procedures of the mass media and their success in constructing reality, towards which society orients itself, may be a particular occasion for this. We therefore repeat our initial question. It is not: what is the case, what surrounds us as world and as society? It is rather: how is it possible to accept information about the world and about society as information about reality when one knows how it is produced?
? Notes
Foreword
1 Nordrhein-Westfalische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vortrage, G 333 (Opladen, 1995).
Chapter 1 Differentiation as a Doubling of Reality
1 This is also true of sociologists who can no longer acquire their knowl- edge simply by strolling about nor just by looking and listening. Even when they use so-called empirical methods, they always already know what they know and what they don't know - from the mass media. Cf. Rolf Lindner, The Reportage of Urban Culture: Robert Park and the Chicago School (Cambridge, 1996).
2 Hamlet, i. i.
3 Following Heinz von Foerster, 'Objects: Tokens for (Eigen-)
Behaviors', in id. , Observing Systems (Seaside, Calif. , 1981), pp. 2 7 3 -
85.
4 On this irremediable uncertainty, cf. Dennis McQuail, 'Uncertainty
about the Audience and the Organization of Mass Communication', in Paul Halmos, ed. , The Sociology of Mass Media Communicators, Sociological Review Monograph 13 (Keele, Staffordshire, 1969), pp. 75-84. Tom Burns, 'Public Service and Private World', pp. 53-73, concludes from this that producers have a special involvement in their own products.
5 Following Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds, Materialities of Communication (Stanford, Calif. , 1994). Cf. also e. g. Siegfried Weischenberg and Ulrich Hienzsch, 'Die Entwicklung
? der Medientechnik', in Klaus Merten, Siegfried J. Schmidt and Siegfried Weischenberg, eds, Die Wirklicbkeit der Medien: Eine Einfiihrung in die Kommunikationswissenschaft (Opladen, 1994), pp. 455-80.
6 For the logical consequences of this distinction, see Elena Esposito,
E'operazione di osservazione: costruttivismo e teoria dei sistemi sociali
(Milan, 1992).
7 On the debate about 'constructivism' as a theory of the mass media,
see the contributions by Hermann Boventer, Siegfried Weischenberg and Ulrich Saxer, following an educational programme on German television's ARD channel, in: Communicatio Socialis, 25/2 (1992). For a critical response, see Niklas Luhmann, 'Der 'Radikale Konstruktivismus' als Theorie der Massenmedien? Bemerkungen zu einer irrefiihrenden Diskussion', Communicatio Socialis, 27 (1994), pp. 7-12. Cf. also a series of contributions in Merten, Schmidt and Weischenberg, Wirklichkeit der Medien. The debate suffers from the problematic self-portrayal of so-called 'radical constructivism'. Its radicalism supposedly consists in its restriction to the idea, the sub- ject, the use of signs. Yet that itself is a logically impossible position. In using distinctions such as idea/reality, subject/object or sign/ signified, one cannot give up one side of the distinction without re- linquishing the distinction itself. There is no such thing (see Husserl's 'Phenomenology') as a subject without an object, an idea without a reference to reality, a reference-free use of signs. The 'constructivists' would therefore need to go to the trouble of replacing these distinc- tions, if indeed they are obsolete, with another, perhaps with the well-established distinction of system and environment.
8 For more detail, see Niklas Luhmann, Erkenntnis als Konstruktion (Bern, 1988); id. , Die Wissenschaft der Gesellscbaft (Frankfurt, 1990).
9 For the widely held opposing opinion see e. g. N. Katherine Hayles, 'Constrained Constructivism: Epistemology in Science and Culture', in George Levine, ed. , Realism and Representation: Essays on the Problem of Realism in Relation to Science, Eiterature, and Culture (Madison, Wis. , 1993), pp. 27-43. Cf. also my discussion with Katherine Hayles, 'Theory of a Different Order: A Conversation with Katherine Hayles and Niklas Luhmann', Cultural Critique, 31 (1995), pp. 7-36. Hayles assumes that there is an inaccessible 'unmediated flux' outside the cognitively operating system, a flux per se, as it were. But she also assumes that a cognitive system can nonetheless only gain certainty of reality by maintaining contact with this exter- nal world, even if only on the inside of the system's boundary. 'Al-
? 10 11
though there may be no outside that we can know, there is a bound- ary' (p. 40). But then this contact would have to be a hybrid struc- ture - neither inside nor outside.
See e. g. Hans Mathias Kepplinger, Ereignismanagement: Wirklichkeit und Massenmedien (Zurich, 1992).
'The moderns [in contrast to the Greeks, N. L. ] procure literature from the bookshop along with the few objects contained and enlarged therein, and they make use of the latter for the enjoyment of the former,' we read in Jean Paul, 'Vorschule der Asthetik', in Werke, vol. 5 (Munich, 1963), p. 74. Of course, the transfiguration of what is past in the form of the Greeks is itself an effect of printing. The critique of the dependency of the author upon publishers/buyers/ readers/reviewers can be traced back to the beginning of the eight- eenth century.
On this, see Ralf Godde, 'Radikaler Konstruktivismus und Journalismus: Die Berichterstattung liber den Golfkrieg - Das Scheitern eines Wirklichkeitsmodells', in Gebhard Rusch and Siegfried J. Schmidt, eds, Konstruktivismus: Geschichte und Anwendung
(Frankfurt, 1992), pp. 269-88.
Chapter 2 Self-reference and Other-reference
On this, see A. Morena, J. Fernandez and A. Etxeberria, 'Computa- tional Darwinism as a Basis for Cognition', Revue internationale de systematique, 6 (1992), pp. 205-21.
See George Spencer Brown, Laws of Form (repr. New York, 1979), pp. 56ff, 69ff.
For more detail on this see Elena Esposito, 'Ein zweiwertiger nichtselbstandiger Kalkiil', in Dirk Baecker, ed. , Kalkiil der Form (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 96-111.
Spencer Brown, Laws of Form, p. 57. See also the important expla- nation that this indeterminacy does not follow from the use of inde- pendent variables which represent conditions in the world that are indeterminable for the system, but rather from the way the calculus itself is set up. The problem of indeterminacy, then, cannot be solved either by inserting into the independent variables of the mathemati- cal equations values which might emerge from conditions in the world. We can interpret as follows: the problem of indeterminacy, insoluble at the level of the binary calculus, is a consequence of the differentia- tion of the system. This differentiation forces the system to react to the difference of system and environment, which is thereby given,
12
1
2 3
4
? with a re-entry, i. e. with the distinction, usable only internally, of
self-reference and other-reference.
5 See his review in the Whole Earth Catalogue magazine (spring 1 9 6 9 ) ,
p. 14.
6 Spencer Brown, Laws of Form, p. 58.
7 This ambivalence is also considered necessary in general communi-
cation research. See e. g.
Jurgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson, Com- munication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry (New York, 1951; 2nd edn 1968), p. 238: 'We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it. '
8 This could not happen either with the binary distinctions towards which the system orients its own operations, or at any rate not with a binary logic of utterance oriented towards truth/untruth. See for this Gotthard Giinther, 'Die historische Kategorie des Neuen' and 'Logik, Zeit, Emanation und Evolution', in Beitrage zur Grundlegung einer operationsfahigen Dialektik, vol. 3 (Hamburg, 1980), pp. 183-- 210 and 95-135.
9 Cf. Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems (Stanford, Calif. , 1995), pp. 155ff, 195ff.
10 Cf. Frank Marcinkowski, Publizistik als autopoietisches System (Opladen, 1993), pp. 43ff.
11 This could be further elaborated with regard to the thematic but not medical proximity to topics such as homosexuality or drug use and, further, to the political challenges thrown up by this set of issues.
Chapter 3 Coding
1 The fact that this is an extremely drastic condition need hardly be further elaborated here. If someone on the street asks us the way, we cannot respond in the social system by singing Lilli Marlene or ask- ing in return whether the inquirer is a true believer in Jesus Christ. The sharp restriction of possibilities for meaningful continuation of the communication indicates to the sociologist that without further systemic differentiations society can achieve only a very low level of complexity.
2 Not merely through the economic system of accounting nor through the long-established and familiar system of 'credit', which depended upon existing social ties and on trust. On this specific point, see Michael Hutter, 'Communication in Economic Evolution: The Case of Money', in Richard E. England, ed. , Evolutionary Concepts in Contemporary Economics (Ann Arbor, Mich. , 1994), pp. 111-36.
? 3 Thus not merely through plain superiority of power, which in turn depended upon complex conditions of social support.
4 Communication in reply is not ruled out completely, of course. It remains possible in individual cases, for example in the form of read- ers' letters or in the form of telephone calls to radio or television broadcasting centres. But when such responses occur, they are in- cluded in the autopoeisis of the system. Selected letters can be printed, or telephone calls dealt with during an on-air programme, where such calls are made visible on screen in the studio and might be re- trieved and slotted in. They serve the reproduction of the system of the mass media and not the system's contact with its environment.
5 It should be noted here for future reference that this in no way rules out social communication that goes on orally, in written form, through letters, or on the telephone, and neither does it rule out organized responsibility, legal obligation etc. Politicians are individually invited to take part in talk shows. But, and this is the crucial point, such contacts do not occur in the specific manner of mass communication.
6 For other cases see Niklas Luhmann, 'Codierung und Programmierung: Bildung und Selektion im Erziehungssystem' in id. , Soziologische Aufklarung, vol. 4 (Opladen, 1987), pp. 182-201; id. , Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1988), pp. 85ff, 187ff; id. , Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1990), pp. 194ff; id. , Das Recht der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 165ff; id. , Die Kunst der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1995).
7 The medical system is an example of the opposite case. Here, only the negative value, sickness, is operationally connective, whereas health merely serves as a reflexive value.
8 Such a confusion would amount to the naivety of certain religious moralists who assume that only the just and not the sinners belong to the kingdom of God (although one can infer the opposite from the Bible itself).
9 It must be pointed out here that especially in interactions among those co-present and in societies which know only this form of com- munication, the information value of utterances can be marginalized. People have to talk even when they have nothing to say, because the only way to express good will and belonging is through participa- tion in communication; suspicions regarding evil intentions would otherwise arise. See e. g. Bronislaw Malinowski, 'The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages' in C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (London, 1923;
? 10th edn, 5th repr. 1960), pp. 296-336; Lorna Marshall, 'Sharing, Talking, and Giving: Relief of Social Tensions Among ! Kung Bushmen', Africa, 31 (1961), pp. 231-49. Ruesch and Bateson, Communication (ch. 2 n. 7), pp. 213ff treat this issue (for modern conditions) as the resolution of a paradox through positive meta- communication. People communicate 'we are communicating', whereas it would be paradoxical to communicate 'we are not com- municating'. In the system of mass communication the correspond- ing problem is no longer found at the level of communication - here the information/non-information code prevails. Rather, it occurs as an organizational constraint which fills entire pages or broadcast- ing slots, be it with more stories being told, with imagined scenes, with music.
10 See Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and Epistemology (London, 1972), p. 381.
11 For example, the purpose of a mathematical equation is to maintain a difference which makes no difference. This means also that the mathematics of equations destroys information and neutralizes time (i. e. the later difference).
12 See Spencer Brown, Laws of Form (ch. 2 n. 2), p. 3.
13 The reader might notice that this statement corresponds to what has
been said about operational constructivism.
14 On this distinction, see Donald M. MacKay, Information, Mecha-
nism and Meaning (Cambridge, Mass. , 1969).
15 Here is one important difference between the code of the mass media
and the code of the system of art. Works of art must display sufficient ambiguity, a plurality of potential readings. Particularly in modern art, this characteristic is pushed provocatively to its furthest extremes. This is Umberto Eco's theme in The Open Work (London, 1989). And perhaps this tendency towards extreme demands upon the ob- server is itself a reaction to the mass media and the possibilities for the technical reproduction of art works. Pinnegans Wake is one big protest against being read; just as, vice versa, the recommendations on writing style that journalists get fed in their training are diametri- cally opposed to the tendencies towards open artwork. Cf. , e. g. , Harold Evans, Newsman's English (New York, 1972). Postmodern jargon speaks of 'readerly' text, in order to free textual art from such demands.
16 Marcinkowski, Publizistik (ch. 2 n. 10), pp. 65ff attributes the posi- tive value of the public to the code of the system in the distinction
? public/non-public. However, this cannot explain the unique dynamic of the system, arising from the fact that the system is unable to do anything more with what has already been made public. The system is continuously ending its own operations itself by the output or the 'purpose' of publication; as a result, it can only continue if it treats as a negative value that which is already known, by which it can measure what may still be considered for publication as something not yet known. Autopoiesis thus consists in a constant exchange of positive for negative values.
17 For this, see Bateson, Steps to an Ecology, pp. 412ff.
18 This contrasts noticeably with medieval and early modern rhetoric which described as 'antiqui' and 'moderni', or then as 'anciens' and 'modernes' those who lived before and those living now, and left any judgement to rhetorical disposition. Cf. on this literature about the querelle before the 'querelle', e. g. August Buck, Die 'querelle des anciens et des modernes' im italienischen Selbstverstandnis der Re- naissance und des Barock (Wiesbaden, 1973); Elisabeth Goessmann, Antiqui und Moderni im Mittelalter: Eine gescbichtlicbe Standort- bestimmung (Munich, 1974), or Robert Black, 'Ancients and Moderns in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and History in Accolti's Dialogue of the Preeminence of Men of his Own Time\ Journal of the History of
Ideas, 43 (1982), pp. 3-32.
19 All manner of combinations are conceivable - for example, a deep
ambivalence in Rousseau or a contrary, conterfactual and therefore
normative positive evaluation of the 'modern' in Habermas.
20 See e. g. Paul de Man, 'Literary History and Literary Modernity' (1969) in id. , Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contempo- rary Criticism (2nd edn, London, 1983), pp. 142-65, or Jiirgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lec-
tures (Cambridge, 1990).
21 The sociological curiosities (and embarrassments) of such a debate
are expounded on in Jeffrey C. Alexander, 'Modern, Anti, Post, and Neo: How Social Theories have Tried to Understand the "New World" of "Our Time" ', Zeitschrift fitr Soziologie, 23 (1994), pp. 165-97.
22 Cf. on this Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (London, 1990), esp. pp. Iff.
23 Cf. also on the following, Marcinkowski, Publizistik, esp. pp. 133ff.
24 Before the age of the mass media, one spoke of admiratio {= amaze- ment, admiration, astonishment, shock occasioned by deviations). This presupposes that external causes and their occurrence are an
? exception. When the mass media normalize news, the corresponding concept must be generalized. On this, see also Niklas Luhmann, 'Abweichung oder Neuheit? ' in id. , Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik, vol. 4 (Frankfurt, 1995). Moreover, it is not admiratio but only irritation or irritability that can be used as an argument in the context of an evolutionary theory. This is particularly so since Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck's Zoological Philosophy of 1809 (London, 1914).
25 No place is foreseen for this function of unrest within the Parsonian theoretical edifice. Adherents of this theory therefore locate the mass media in the domain of the integrative function and medium of 'influence'. See esp. Harry M. Johnson, 'The Mass Media, Ideology, and Community Standards', in Jan J. Loubser et al. , eds, Explorations in General Theory in Social Sciences: Essays in Honor of Talcott Par- sons (New York, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 609-38, and Jeffrey C. Alexander, 'The Mass Media in Systematic, Historical, and Comparative Perspec- tive', in Jeffrey C. Alexander and Paul Colomy, eds, Differentiation Theory and Social Change: Comparative and Historical Perspectives (New York, 1990), pp. 323-66. This is problematic for several rea- sons, for example with regard to the preference for accounts of conflicts and deviations from the norm. And in general one would have to con- sider whether the primary orientation of the mass media lies in the social dimension at all, or not rather in the temporal dimension.
Chapter 4 System-specific Universalism
1 As a guiding difference - that ought perhaps to be commented on. It goes without saying that all systems distinguish the information that interests them and in this respect generate an empty space of non- information. But the system of the mass media alone reflects this difference in order to be able to recognize which operations belong to the system and which do not.
2 These are Parsonian concepts. For their application to the theory of the mass media, see also Jeffrey C. Alexander, 'The Mass News Media in Systemic, Historical and Comparative Perspective', in Elihu Katz and Tamas Szecsko, eds, Mass Media and Social Change (London, 1981), pp. 19-51.
3 For the interplay of these domains in a developmental-historical per- spective, see Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social His- tory of American Newspapers (New York, 1978).
? 1 See for this, in addition to the customary histories of the newspaper industry, Lennard J. Davis, Factual Fictions: The Origins of the Eng- lish Novel (New York, 1983), pp. 42ff. The material analysed by Davis also shows, incidentally, that the need to present news and the use of this as a marketing strategy first appeared in the sixteenth century in the entertainment sector and for cheap products of the printing press, distinctly before the sciences followed with their concept of truth ori- ented specifically to new facts and explanations of facts.
2 See the comedy The Staple of News (premiere 1 6 2 5 , first printing 1631, quotation from the Ben Jonson edn, eds. C. H. Herford and P. and E. Simpson, vol. 6 (Oxford, 1966), pp. 277-382), esp. the inser- tion 'To the Readers' after the second act (p. 325): 'but Newes made like times Newes (a weekly cheat to draw mony) and could not be fitter reprehended, then in raising this ridiculous Office of the Staple. Wherein the age may see her owne folly, or hunger and thirst after publish'd pamphlets of Newes, set out every Saturday, but made all at home, & no syllable of truth in them. ' Thus, his criticism infers untruth from the organization of the production of news. In the same piece, though, one also comes across signs of amazement/admira- tion: 'Sir, I admire, / The method o' your place; all things within't / Are so digested, fitted, and compos'd / As it shewes Wit has married Order' (i. v. 66-9; p. 295).
3 In approaches oriented more to the sociology of professions, one also finds a way of looking that relates to 'journalism' and disregards other technical forms of media dissemination. See most recently Bernd B l o b a u m , Journalismus als soziales System: Geschichte, Ausdifferenzierung und Verselbstandigung (Opladen, 1994).
4 And if it is unknown, then what can also remain unknown is whether or not it is determined at all. This can remain open (and be left to the philosophers), because it would make no difference in either case. To put it differently, as far as this issue is concerned, there is no opportunity for information.
5 The suggestion that we should consider this question of news factors or the news value of potential reports comes from Johann Galtung and Marie Holmboe Ruge, 'The Structure of Foreign News', Journal of Peace Research, 2 (1965), pp. 64-91. For a typical list in which nonetheless some important items are missing and others are ana- lysed in more detail, see e. g. Malcolm Peltu, 'The Role of Communi- cation Media', in Harry Otway and Malcolm Peltu, eds, Regulating Industrial Risks: Science, Hazards and Public Protection (London,
? 1985), pp. 128-48 (137ff). From the perspective of an increasing risk consciousness, we find the following selection: (1) immediacy and event-orientation; (2) drama and conflict; (3) negativity because bad news usually has drama and conflict; (4) human interest; (5) photographability; (6) simple story lines; (7) topicality (current news frame); (8) media cannibalism; (9) exclusivity; (10) status of the source of information; (11) local interest.
6 More recent language usage in systems and evolutionary theory speaks also of 'attractors' in referring to the structural conditions which attract certain operations. We shall keep to 'selectors' in order to avoid teleological misunderstandings.
7 Nonetheless, if they prove to be expedient, they are excused. 'As we reported in part of yesterday's edition . . . ' Or they are smuggled in as an aside to aid the understanding of receivers who have not kept up to date.
8 Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Cul- ture (London, 1992), p. 174, mentions the headline of a Scottish newspaper from the year 1912: 'Aberdeen Man Lost at Sea'.