Transcription
This video is both an introduction to Niklas Luhmann's social system theory and a video in our series on media theory. If you're only interested in the introduction to Niklas Luhmann but not in the specifics of his media theory, please look at the timestamps and jump right away to social systems theory.
So today we finally get to the mass media theory that is, in my personal view, the most advanced that we have: Niklas Luhmann's theory of the reality of the mass media. Different from Niklas Luhmann, Noam Chomsky's manipulation theory, which we discussed in the previous episode, is probably the most common-sense type of media theory. Most people understand that the mass media and social media are out there to manipulate them. News are not neutral; it's easy to see that they promote political agendas. Movies or videos, too, we understand, promote certain values and condemn others. That advertising manipulates is obvious to everyone. Anyways, many specific claims by Chomsky about how exactly mass media manipulate and especially who precisely the manipulators are may be challenged, but his basic insight seems almost intuitively right. Even in the liberal West, the mass media are not free but used for mass manipulation.
There's one strange fact, though, that haunts Chomsky's theory: We know of all his insights into the manipulative nature of mass media through these very same media: his books, his countless interviews, and YouTube videos like ours about him. The peculiar manipulation we're dealing with here seems almost theologically complex; it's a manipulation that reveals itself as manipulation.
Luhmann aims at providing a higher-level media theory than the manipulation theories, which flourish in both popular and academic circles. He recognizes that manipulation is not something external that happens to media from the outside and that could or should be avoided; instead, it's an internal characteristic of how media work. Mass media cannot not be manipulated. Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, whose Marxist media theory we also discussed in this series, already said as much: "There is no such thing as unmanipulated writing, filming, or broadcasting." Everyone knows, or at least suspects, that, and the media themselves tell us so. Therefore, the question cannot be, as manipulation theorists tend to ask, "How can we get rid of media manipulation?" Or, as today's media discourses often suggest: Let's abolish "fake news" so that only "true news" remain. This claim to replace fake with true news is, of course, also a media claim and therefore "always already" both manipulated and manipulating. Luhmann writes: “It is impossible to understand the ‘reality of the mass media’ if you assume it's their job to provide correct information on the world and then assess how they fail, distort reality, and manipulate opinion-- as if they could do otherwise.” Mass media construct our reality and manufacture our opinions, like it or not. But given the fact that we, just like you right now, spend most of our life in them, we actually somehow seem to like it.
The question for Luhmann is not how to abolish mass media manipulation, but it is also not Enzensberger's question: How can everyone become a manipulator? In today's social media, everyone can actually be a manipulator, but that has hardly made the Marxist or anarchist dream of Enzensberger or Chomsky come true. Luhmann does not aim at formulating another Utopian vision of what the media should be---how they can be true; or empower individual agency. He wants to understand instead how they actually work. That's why his book on media is called *The Reality of the Mass Media*.
The first question for Luhmann, right at the beginning of his book, is: How to make sense of the curious fact that we all suspect the media of manipulation while this doesn't diminish their impact on everyone's life or their importance in society? To the contrary, despite or perhaps because of this suspicion, "the knowledge obtained from the mass media emerges apparently on its own as a self-reinforcing configuration." The same paradox and the same question is varied at the very end of the book. There is a "crass contradiction," Luhmann says, between the dubious way in which the mass media construct the reality we all relate to, and their enormous success in doing just that. The question is: How do the mass media manage to make us "accept the information they provide on the world and on society as information on reality, while we know how this information is produced?" Against all odds, it seems, the mass media achieve the miraculous feat that the reality they construct emerges within them "as a self-reinforcing configuration."
Of all the men the media is discussed in this series, Luhmann is probably closest to Jean Baudrillard. Calling the mass media a "self-reinforcing configuration" that "emerges apparently on its own" echoes Baudrillard's description of them as "an autonomous system administered by the code." The biggest difference between Jean Baudrillard and Niklas Luhmann is, however, that while Baudrillard tends to express himself in dramatic metaphors, Luhmann presents not just the theory of the mass media but a grand super theory of society. For him, the mass media is just one of many autonomous systems, all administered by their respective codes.
To make sense of Luhmann's mass media theory, it's essential to have a basic understanding of his general theory of society. I'll give a short account of this self-labeled super theory now and then return to his mass media theory in the next video in this series.
How does a society consisting of "self-reinforcing systems emerging apparently on their own" work? To be frank, Luhmann did not do a good job at explaining this. His writings are basically impenetrable at first sight. Why this is so would be a topic for a different video, but no worries; there are some quite accessible illustrations of Luhmann social systems theory in pop culture, although to be honest, I don't think any of them was actually intended. I will give three examples of unintended illustrations of social systems theory on TV, in cinema, and in popular non-fiction literature. Maybe you're familiar with at least one of them.
*The Wire* was a successful HBO TV series in the 2000s. It's a crime drama in five seasons set in Baltimore. Wikipedia explains: “The Wire introduces a different institution of the city and its relationship to law enforcement in each season…. The five subjects are, in chronological order, the illegal drug trade, the port system, the city government and bureaucracy, education and schools, and the print news medium.” If using systems theory language, we can say: Each season of *The Wire* focuses on a different social system: the police/crime system, the economic system (by the example of the shipping industry), the political system, the education system, and the mass media system. In the course of the whole series, the dynamics between these systems, and their relations to other systems, like the legal and the prison system, become evident. From the perspective of the first season of the show, the drug trade is about criminals getting caught or not getting caught. For the police, it's about finding out who did what and to arrest them, while for the criminals, it's about avoiding precisely this. Of course, there's much more going on in the show--but that's the point of social systems theory--what happens is described from the perspective of the police/crime system. When people fall in love, they fall in love as criminals, or police--or both. In the second season, the perspective shifts toward economic issues, such as conflicts between workers and employers or who profits in which way from what. In the following seasons, the perspective changes again to other systems: who gets elected and who not; what is legal and what not; what's reported in the media and what not.
Systems theoretical points illustrated by the show are: First, like the Baltimore drug trade, society is a complex configuration of different systems, none of which is at the center. You can look at the drug trade from the perspective of the crime/police, from the economy, politics, law, or media, and different things matter; different logics or rationals are at work. Second, each system constitutes an environment of the others. Crime and police operate in illegal, economic, political, and media environments and must watch what happens there. The media function by looking at what's going on in crime, politics, the economy, and so on. Third, what people do and think is conditioned by their systemic roles, and these can be multiple. The same person can be a criminal, a politician, a defendant in court, and someone interviewed by the media and will act and feel differently in each role. Their actions are best understood not as free expressions of "sovereign individuals" but as conditioned by the options they have in the respective system. Fourth, each system, like a biological organism, is geared towards continuing itself, to go on with its own operations: police and criminals play a never-ending cat and mouse game; one trade results in another one; in politics, one election leads to the next; and in the media, stories need to be continued.
The movie *Don't Look Up* illustrates the same systems theoretical basis. When a comet approaches the Earth, different systems react differently and clash with one another: science, media, politics, and the economy. The movie is a comedy, and its humor is based on the incongruity between these systems. The scientists want to communicate the scientific facts; the media want to tell a good story; the big corporations want to make money; and the politicians want to have favorable polls. Each system does its own thing, and people act in accordance with their roles in the respective system. This gives rise to multiple funny conflicts, such as scientists being really awkward on TV shows. In the end, no centralized social action is possible, and while all the systems do what they do and are busy dealing with one another, the comet destroys the Earth.
*Dreamland* is a book by the journalist Sam Quinones on the Opiate Epidemic in the USA. Quinones analyzes the complex dynamics of the epidemic: inventions in pharmaceutical science, business interests of pharmaceutic corporations, media marketing campaigns, the prescription of painkillers in the medical system, crime gangs producing and selling opiates, the police trying to catch them, political reactions through the epidemic, and eventually legal action against the pharmaceutic industry. The book shows the complex evolution of the opiate epidemic and how it provided different opportunities for different systems: scientific opportunities, business opportunities, medical opportunities, legal and political opportunities, and also media opportunities, for instance, for Sam Quinones. From the perspective of each system, the reality looks different; there's no center, and people's actions are conditioned by their systemic roles: scientists invent; pharmaceutic companies sell; doctors treat patients; police catch criminals; lawyers sue; while all the time, addicts deal with their addiction.
*The Wire*, *Don’t Look Up*, and *Dreamland* all show society as a complex configuration of different social systems: politics, law, media, and so on. They illustrate one of Luhmann’s most important concepts: “functional differentiation.” This means the division of society into different systems. According to Luhmann, this is what society consists of; it's best understood not as a community of billions of individuals but, at its basic level, it's constituted by these different systems. This view of society can be roughly compared with the view of the human body: not as a sum of cells or body parts like arms and legs, but as constituted by different systems such as the cardiovascular system, the neural system, the reproductive system, and so on. Social systems are defined by the function they fulfill for the whole. That’s why Luhmann calls them “function systems.” Each of them allows society to do something. In the body, for instance, the reproductive system enables humans to procreate. In society, the political system, for instance, enables society to make collectively binding decisions, like joining the EU. If you want it or not, if the political system decides that your country joins the EU, you're in it. The function of the political system is to make such collectively binding decisions.
Functional differentiation has not always been there, according to Luhmann; it's the basic characteristic of modernity. Modern society is functionally differentiated. The transition to functional differentiation happened, according to Luhmann, between the 16th and the 18th century. Before that, society was characterized by what he calls “stratified differentiation.” This refers to different strata, roughly comparable to the different, hierarchical levels in feudal societies, like the aristocrats, the clerics, the craftspeople, and the farmers. Or, if you prefer, it’s also roughly comparable to what Marxists call “classes.” Before modernity, the differences between social strata structured life; what people did or didn’t do, what they could and couldn’t do, depended on if they were, let’s say, farmers or aristocrats. Today, what we do or don’t do, what we can or can’t do—when we study, vote, or watch YouTube—is conditioned by social systems like education, politics, or media. No matter which social system Luhmann analyzes, he’s always interested in how it emerged between the 16th and 18th century. This is, for him, also the period in which modern mass media emerged, at that time in the form of print media, like books and newspapers. Before the 16th century, books did exist, but who read what, how, why, and when was conditioned by the strata people were in, and most people didn't read at all. Before the 16th century, books were not mass media because there was no mass media system; instead, books played an important role in the church and for clerics, for instance.
The different function systems have different functions—that’s what distinguishes them. But that's not all; they're also communication systems; that's what defines them. It's what they do: they communicate, and they can be distinguished because they communicate in different ways. While all social systems communicate through language, they also often communicate by other means specific to them: Think of money in the economy, votes in politics, or grades in education. For Luhmann, however, the most basic communication difference between the different systems is their code. Its code is unique to each system. The legal system, for instance, is built around the code legal/illegal. All its communications, its institutions, its functions, revolve around this code. In the academic system (or “science system”), the basic code is true/not true. When academics publish a paper, or present a lecture, they tell others what they find to be true and not true. Others respond and contradict them. But they must use the same code. The purpose of the code is to enable the system to produce more and more communication, of the same type. It enables a system to respond to itself, to connect present with future communication and thereby to reproduce itself endlessly. By using their codes, systems distinguish themselves from one another--and achieve what Luhmann calls “operational closure.” The communication of a system can only be continued with more communication of the same system. In academics, you respond to an academic paper with another paper; you cannot effectively respond with a song or a prayer. But if I just read out my academic papers here on this channel, no matter how brilliant they are, this channel would soon be dead.
Because of “operational closure,” we normally understand immediately to which system a communication operation belongs. If you give money to the waiter, it’s understood it’s the payment for your coffee, and not a declaration of love, or an encouragement to vote for you in the upcoming elections. Of course, misunderstanding or corruption is possible, and it happens often. But: we regard misunderstandings as misunderstandings, or corruption as corruption, precisely because they violate the operational closure of systems: system boundaries were crossed, and that's not okay. Yes, systems are operationally closed. But crucially, systems are at the same time also “cognitively” open to one another: Every system communicates about all the other systems: Academics write about law, politics, the media, you name it. The law regulates academia, the media, and politics. Politicians are keenly aware of what the media say, of what is going on in the economy, and sometimes even do politics in response to what academics say is the truth. Systems need to take note of what’s going on in all the systems around them. As Luhmann says, they are constantly “irritated” by their environment. What is more, systems often are “structurally coupled” to one another: Somewhat comparable to symbiosis in biology, two or more systems can enter into mutually formative relations. Almost all systems are structurally coupled with the economy, for instance: Just one example: In professional sports, the economy and sports are structurally coupled. The teams are at the same time businesses. What a football club does economically has a symbiotic effect on how well it does in sports—and vice versa. And yet, operational closure must remain. Players are bought and sold, but not goals or points. If goals or points are bought, that’s corruption—which can and does happen—but each system can only continue to function if such corruption is regarded as corrupt.
Crucially, Luhmann calls himself a “radical constructivist.” For him, social reality, like money in the economy or points in sports, is constructed. But constructivism is no anti-realism. Something is real not despite but because it’s constructed, like this video, for instance. Just as economic value is constructed in the economy, or political power in politics, “truth” is constructed in science or academics. Again, this does not mean that it is not valid; to the contrary. For truth to be really valid, it must be constructed in science—and not, as in the past, prior to functional differentiation, by the Pope. Unlike in previous times, there are competing truths in science, and all scientific truths are, on principle, falsifiable. What’s constructed can also be reconstructed, or even deconstructed.
Luhmann’s social constructivism is, at the same time, a theory of social evolution. Darwin proposed that biological reality is not the result of intelligent design by a constructor—named God—but an effect of complex system-environment dynamics. Biological reality evolves; it’s not created. Similarly, Luhmann proposes that social reality, too, is not created by individual human agents—like kings or some philosophical geniuses—but evolves. The law, science, and politics were not invented from scratch by some intelligent designers; they evolved historically. This is why Luhmann adopts the concept “autopoiesis” from biology. Just as biological reality evolves on its own, social reality, too, emerges by itself—through communication. Accordingly, human agency is limited. We can eat more healthily, or exercise, or take medication, but the body reacts to this in unpredictable ways. Despite all progress in medicine, we are not masters of our bodies, and much less of their evolution. In society, too, we make decisions, in politics, or the economy, for instance. But every decision, take the decision to marry for instance, produces innumerable effects, among them many more non-intended and incalculable than intended and calculable. And, importantly, every decision generates the need for more decisions. First, you need to decide if to marry or not; then if you want children or not; and, later, who gets the custody.
Luhmann’s social theory resembles chaos theory in science, and the famous notion of the “butterfly effect”: given the sheer multitude of what goes on simultaneously in the systems and the environment and the multiple effects everything has on everything else, we’re not in control. The Enlightenment idea was that social progress leads to more and more self-control. It enhances agency, rationality, and “sovereignty.” That’s the modernist dream. But systems theory suggests, quite to the contrary: The more society evolves, the more complex it becomes, and the less control is possible. But, no worries, the good news is: If there is less control, you’re also less being controlled. In hyper-complex postmodernity, we are out of control. This is the biggest difference between social systems theory and mainstream social and political theories. Most of these theories, in academia and media alike, celebrate the “sovereign individual”—both Jordan Peterson on the right, and social justice theories on the left do this as well. Luhmann labels himself not just a “radical constructivist,” but also a “radical anti-humanist.” This sounds terribly negative and pessimistic. And it probably prevented Luhmann’s theory from becoming popular in North America, with its insistence on individual human agency and free will. However, Luhmann is not a pessimist at all. Just as there’s nothing wrong with biological evolution, there’s nothing wrong with an autopoietic society out of human control either. That humans are not ultimately “in charge” doesn’t mean that things can’t get better. Things can and do get better—but only in each respective system. Science constructs better truth, the economy creates more value, and the legal system can make better laws. How this is better, and for whom, however, is always relative to the system. What’s better for the economy is not necessarily better from a legal perspective. There is no chance of universal “consensus” on what is best “for all.” In a highly differentiated society, there is no view from the top, or from above, or from the outside. I, for one, am happy to accept it. I need no system to tell me what’s best for all.
This finally brings me to a crucial notion in Luhmann’s theory already mentioned in passing. Social systems are not just communication and function systems; they are also observing systems. Luhmann’s theory is, philosophically, rooted in Kant’s theory of reason. Kant’s basic point was that how the world appears to us is conditioned by how reason, or, the mind, works. Luhmann uses the same idea and applies it not to reason or the mind, but to society. In society, reality is conditioned by how different systems “observe”—or communicate. The idea is quite simple: The economy “observes” a house in terms of value—and thereby constructs the value of the house. The legal system observes it in legal terms, and in this way, some people own houses—while others illegally occupy them. Conditioned by different modes of observation, different social realities emerge simultaneously, depending on what is observed by which system in which way: the same piece of cheese is a different kind of reality for a bacteria who lives in it or the person who eats it. But none of the two observations is more real than the other. To make things more complicated, for Luhmann, a specific feature of modern society is that we’ve adopted a complex form of observation. Today, we typically observe the observations of others. Luhmann calls this second-order observation. In the economy, for
instance, use or exchange value has been replaced with market value. If you want to know how much you need to pay for a house, you can't just look at the house and at the value of each stone and then count the hours it took to put them on top of each other. You need to look at the housing market instead. There you can see how houses are economically observed by others—and by observing the market, you find out the value of the house.
Everywhere today, in all social systems, second-order observation is on the rise. Everything is rated and ranked. No one simply goes to a restaurant or watches a YouTube video—everyone also observes the reviews, the comments, and the numbers of subscribers. In modern society, we’re constantly in the mode of second-order observation. This is especially obvious in mass media. Here, we are “always already” in the sphere of second-order observation. Here, you always see something as it is being seen by someone else. You observe, for instance, my observation of Luhmann’s observations, as observed, and edited, by Fai. Luhmann says categorically: “The reality of the mass media—this is the reality of second-order observation.” We will take a closer look at this reality in the next episode.