Specifics of Luhmann's Media Theory

"In the news sector, the mass media spread ignorance in the form of (information on) facts that need to be constantly renewed so that no one notices."

-Luhmann

Excerpts from the video above:

News spread ignorance in two ways. First, they report on events as they unfold. The view is much too close to be comprehensive. Second, news can only report a highly selected number of facts. You can be sure that whatever you hear about in the news, you know only superficially. As long as you exclusively rely on news for your information about it, there's always much more going on than what the news have time to inform you about. But since there are always more and newer news, you have no time to reflect on their limitations. It seems that the news are telling you more and more, but in fact, they keep you in a state of perpetual ignorance....

Truth in the news can never be the whole truth. Luhmann illustrates this with two examples from literature: Borges’ famous story “On Exactitude in Science,” and Laurence Sterne’s novel Tristram Shandy. Borges’ story is about the absurdity of a map that represents a territory one-to-one: it would cover the whole territory and thus be totally useless. Similarly absurd is Tristram Shandy. The novel is supposed to give a complete account of the protagonist’s life in 9 volumes. By trying to mention all facts of the protagonist's life, the story becomes so convoluted that he's not even born yet at the end of volume two.

News tells "stories", NOT "the truth".   The official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was called Pravda—”The Truth”. The claim in today's mainstream media to combat fake news reminds me of that title. It creates the counterfactual illusion that the elimination of fake news will result in simply THE Truth. The very notion of "fake news" is a media story. The media make fake news "known to be known", but they can never tell us the whole truth about fake news.

News are often followed commercials. Luhmann says: “After truth comes advertising.” 

The news clearly have no problem with the fact that, for instance, their stories that inform us about the scandal of fake news are framed by advertising. Next to news ,we regard commercials as a perfectly legitimate media program sector. Commercials are everywhere in the media--and we know that we indirectly pay for them, because their costs are added to the prices of the products they make us buy. This makes Luhmann wonder: “How can well-to-do members of society be so stupid to spend so much money on advertising only to confirm their belief in the stupidity of others?” We're perfectly okay with paying companies for manipulating us to buy their stuff. But not only are we that stupid, the cleverer we are, we tend to wrongly convince ourselves that the advertising we pay for only really fools those that are more stupid than we.

Given this quite paradoxical social and psychological mechanism, Luhmann calls media advertising “the self-organization of folly” But, in Luhmann’s analysis, advertising is not just self-organizing folly, it's also the Jesus Christ of the media. It sacrifices itself to purify the other program sectors. Luhmann writes: “Advertising takes the deadly sin of the mass media upon itself—as if thereby all other programs were saved.” The ad next to the news makes the news more credible--simply by emphasizing that it's different from the news.

Advertising has another, almost religious feature. According to Luhmann, it resembles ancient divination practices: It only shows you the surface of things, but mystically promises depth: You see a video of a car passing by in a moment— and yet this brief image suggests that if you buy the car, it’s going to give you lasting power and sex appeal. By means of this suggestive power, commercials fulfill a much-needed function in today’s society. Luhmann says: Advertising “supplies people who lack taste with taste.”

Media advertising and fashion are closely tied to one another. We rely on advertising for crucial information not just on what to buy, but also on which of our clothes we better throw away now. By ironically playing with his own jargon, Luhmann points out another useful function of advertising: Advertising “stabilizes the relation between redundancy and variety in everyday culture.”

There's quite a variety of brands in each shopping mall all known to be known by advertising. However, when you go to a different shopping mall, it's still the same variety. The variety is also redundant. Advertising establishes this wonderful balance between variety and redundancy that enables people to easily orient themselves in any shopping mall on the globe.

The third program sector is entertainment. Entertainment works, according to Luhmann, like a “game.” It constructs an imagined reality, a second reality that is clearly distinguishable from “real reality.” Luhmann mainly thinks about novels and movies, but we can also think of video games today as a more recent example. Novels and movies and video games also construct information, albeit fictional information.

Once more, Luhmann looks back to the times between the 16th and 18th century to explain the function of entertainment. Before modernity, people build their sense of self by identifying with certain characteristics they were born with, such as their class, gender, or place of birth. Luhmann calls this “descent” (Herkunft). When society became more complex, however, he says, “individuals could no longer derive their identity from their descent.”

Clues for who one is, or would like to be, were increasingly provided by the emerging media, especially in novels (Flaneurs?). These new media, Luhmann writes, invite people “to try out virtual realities” they encounter in the media. People began to identify, or not identify, with the protagonists in literature.

To make things a bit more complicated, Luhmann suggests that when reading novels or watching movies, people become accustomed to second-order observation. He says: “You learn to observe observers, this is to say how people react in situations, how they observe themselves.” By observing in the media how others observe, readers or viewers can draw conclusions about themselves: they can relate themselves creatively to fictional characters. Luhmann says: “What is offered in entertainment does not commit anyone to anything particular, but it provides clues … for personal identity work.”

Like modern society in general, this new type of identity is highly dynamic. Luhmann says: “You can choose yourself and are not even obliged to stick with your choice when things get serious.” What Luhmann describes here is close to what I call “profilicity”: An “identity technology” consisting in a curation of profiles.

In novels and movies, we see, in a fictional, game-like setting, how different profiles emerge in feedback-loops with their audiences. You can observe these profiles, and relate them to yourself, try them out to see how they work, and then develop your own identity in a similar way.

The three program sectors entertainment, advertising and news/reports can easily be distinguished. It doesn’t take long to know if you’re watching news, a commercial, or a movie. But as Luhmann calls it, “mutual borrowing” in the form of crossovers between the sectors is common.

Arguably, such borrowing has only increased in the past three decades, news have become more entertaining, and movies more like commercials--think of Barbie, for instance. The different program sectors enter into different structural couplings with other systems. Among the most obvious of these are those between politics and news, and between the economy and advertisement. They illustrate a core point of Luhmann’s social systems theory: no system is in one-sided control of another. The success of politicians depends on how the media report on them, but the media also depend on politics to provide them with narratives and content. The economy depends on media advertising to sell goods, but media advertising also depends on the economy to fill the ad space.

Luhmann calls this mutual control a “cybernetic cycle". He illustrates it with the example of a thermostat you can say that by means of the thermostat the heating system controls the room temperature--or that the room temperature controls the heating system

Here are a few short short conclusions Luhmanns basic question about the mass media is: “What kind of society emerges if it constantly and continuously informs itself about itself in this way?”

His basic answer to this basic question is “Perhaps the most important result of these analyses is that the mass media generate reality, but a reality that is not subject to consensus.”

Conclusion 1 is: The mass media supply society with a background reality that it doesn’t agree on. This contested reality affects all of society in a particular way. Luhmann says that The continuous flow of information in the mass media “set up a horizon of self-generated uncertainty.” This uncertainty has to do with the code of the mass media which transforms information into non-information and thereby generates the constant need for new information. And given the nature of the selectors used by the media to produce information, society seems always on the edge.

Conclusion 2 is: The mass media make society restless and tense. The restless tension of modern society is very much a moral tension. With an “overpowering insistence,” the mass media constantly “renew” morality. Today, Luhmann says: “Morality needs the mass media, and especially TV.” This is not without dangers, Luhmann warns: “Morality isn’t needed in normal interactions—it is always a symptom of the occurrence of pathologies.”

Conclusion 3 is: Their preference for moral communication can make the mass media a catalyst of conflict. Like all other contemporary function systems, the mass media operate with second-order observation. In earlier societies, there had already been information on realty based on second-order observation— like the knowledge about Atlantis in ancient Greece that Luhmann mentions right at the beginning of his book. However, the mass media are very different from earlier second-order providers of knowledge such as wise men or priests who enjoyed some sort of privileged status.

Conclusion 4 is: The mass media make second-order observation the common mode in which reality is constructed and identity is shaped. A difference between Luhmann and earlier philosophers of modernity, from to Descartes to Kant and Habermas is Modern thinkers emphasized a first-person perspective. This grounds a modern trust in subjects and their autonomy, in “sovereign individuality” that can see, and understand, and shape the world. But in today’s society, where the mass media have such a strong presence, whatever we hear, we hear as being said by someone. This brings about a shift in perspective—a shift towards seeing not simply what’s there, but seeing what’s shown to be seen. And this brings about a shift in how we see and show ourselves as well. In the 21st century, in the age of mass and social media, we need to see, and show, ourselves as being seen. This is to say: In today's media, we’ve entered the age of profilicity. This is what I am going to discuss in the next episode of this series on media theory.