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Niklas Luhmanns Theory of the Mass Media

Gotthard Bechmann & Nico Stehr

Published online: 12 January 2011# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Abstract In this paper, we critically examine and contex-tualize Niklas Luhmanns analysis of the modern massmedia. Aside from features of the political economy of theday, the motor that nourishes and sustains the allegedtrajectory of modern societies toward mass societies is, inthe eyes of many observers, the growing significance of themedia, increasingly accessible and within the reach ofvirtually all of the public, a view shared by the FrankfurtSchool and Luhmanns systems theory.

None of Luhmanns many other books made it into themedia, in the form of reviews and extensive discussions, asquickly as his The Reality of the Mass Media. This maynaturally be because the mass media saw themselves in asociological treatment and reacted ambivalentlyflatteredat being elevated to the status of an autopoietic system withsocial relevance, but also annoyed because the picture thatemerges in Luhmanns examination did not match theirown self-image.

A deeper reason may be, however, that Luhmannexplicitly took the public suspicion of the mass media asthe basis for his theoretical construct, only to arrive at acompletely different assessment of the functioning and

importance of the mass media. This assessment is farremoved from either an enthusiastic endorsement asenlightenment, or severe criticism of the media; rather, itprovides an analysis of the mechanisms of producing realitywhich is more merciless and free of illusions than Adornoand Horkheimers reflections, let alone those of theirintellectual successors.

Luhmanns observations about the mass media openwith an apodictic note: Whatever we know about oursociety, or indeed about the world in which we live, weknow through the mass media; and, on the other hand, weknow so much about the mass media that we are not able totrust these sources.

This defines the area for study. In the remainder of hisbook, Luhmann explains in detail why this contradictionconstitutes the uniquely modern and productive elements inthe mass media. His argument is based on two fundamentalideas that serve as the cornerstone of his study. First, themass media form operationally closed systems that can becompared with other social systems, e.g. law, politics,science, business, etc. Second, cognition itself is self-referential and closed: it can only occur in systems. Whatdoes this mean?

It means that the mass media do not present an image ofa reality that they have distinguished (this cannot actuallybe their function), but rather they themselves create thereality which they communicate daily as news, reports,advertising. Although this reality is a manufactured realitythat arises selectivelyand we are aware of thisit is thesocially relevant one, and retains its validity while giving usa view of genuine reality, if we understand how this isproduced, constructed and consumed.

The project of ideological criticism and enlightenment isnot concerned with this, as it involves effects of functionaldifferentiation that cannot be penetrated. Simply by adopt-

N. Stehr (*)Zeppelin University,Am Seemooser Horn 20,88045 Friedrichshafen, Germanye-mail: nico.stehr@t-online.de

G. BechmannITAS, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe,76012 Karlsruhe, Germany

Soc (2011) 48:142147DOI 10.1007/s12115-010-9410-7

ing this starting point, Luhmann changes the perspective ofmass communications research radically. He is notconcerned with how we can improve media reporting orenhance the situation. It would be more accurate to say thatby reversing the point of view, he distances himself fromhis subject by emphasizing the improbability of the way themass media function.

Luhmanns description starts with a definition: massmedia includes all those institutions of society which makeuse of technical means of reproduction for the purpose ofthe dissemination of communication. But the decisivefeature of this definition of mass media is that nointeraction can take place between sender and receivers inthe presence of both.

This conception of mass media has far-reaching impli-cations. There is no direct feedback from recipient to senderthat can be centrally managed; each party must construct itsown image of the other. Media producers indeed havecertain ideas about whom they are actually producing for,but this viewer is characterized by assumptions, speculationand statistics. Like Nietzsches madman seeking God, thesearch for the viewer is doomed to failure. Mass mediamust individualize and produce on a generalized basis,without being able to configure for individuals. Thisdilemma describes the structural operation of the media.

A second factor that reinforces this ambivalence is the dualreality of the mass media. On the one hand, the reality of themass media is their mode of operation, and to some extenttheir technological aspect (the materiality of communication,for example as print, radio, TV, Internet); that is, everythingwhich they use for distribution and which can be seen in theirsystem as communication in transitas communication thatgoes on within it and through them. On the other hand, theygenerate realityfor themselves and others. Here Luhmannsfocus is not on the mode of operation, but rather on the massmedias operation of observing, how they see the world.There is a duplication of reality here: [The media] indeedcommunicateabout something. About something else orabout themselves. Mass media as systems are capable ofdistinguishing, and forced to distinguish, between self-reference and external reference; and it is possible to observethis as a social scientist, a critic or someone involved whoappears in the media, and to a certain extent rediscovers aperspective on themselves not as a person, but rather as atopic. The processing of self-references and external refer-ences is what defines the curious mobility of the media. Self-reference is always present in every mode of operation: onebroadcast follows another, and if this chain breaks, thesystem of the mass media disintegrates. External references,by contrast, relate to the context of the system, and in ourinstance are represented by topics.

Topics not only form the memory of the media, butalso constitute the structural coupling to other areas of

society. Within the system (and this is what characterizesthe actual functioning) there is an ongoing balancingprocess between self-reference and external reference. Theconstruction of reality is not a capricious or even arbitraryprocess: on the contrary, the ongoing creation of the unityof self-reference and external reference is (assuming theoperational closure of the system) the rule-driven mode, inwhich the media systematically create reality.

Besides this constant alternation of the differencebetween self-reference and external reference, the massmedia also have to be able to distinguish, on a system-specific basis, mass media communications from those thatare legal, scientific or religious. Here, Luhmann draws onhis differentiation and media theory. What is modern aboutmodern society is its functional differentiation into differentsubsystems that have formed their own type of communi-cation. The central mechanism in this communicationstructure is the binary coding of the individual system.Binary coding is crucial to functional differentiation, as thisorganizes communication specifically in terms of theexclusion of outside values, regardless of the consequencesfor other communication. Accordingly, the legal systemonly needs to concern itself with the difference just/unjust,and scientists with true/false, without having to worry aboutthe religious or economic consequences of their inventionand discoveries. Functionally differentiated systems linktwo essentially opposed but complementary structures: theyspecialize in a particular form of social communication,determined by their respective code. To this extent thedifferentiation and increase in performance are fuelled byself-delimitation. At the same time, they are universal, inthat their function cannot be performed by any othersystem. It is this development which has boosted thecapability and growth processes of modern society in ahistorically unique manner. So what is it that structuresmass media communication?

Here, Niklas Luhmann sees the coding as information/noninformation, where information is the positive value, thedesignatory value that can be continuously extended, andwith which the system describes its own operating; andnoninformation is the negative or reflexive value that showsunder what conditions the positive value may be used. Thistype of coding has two specific features that result incontinuous unrest and distraction in society. The mostsignificant feature of the code information/noninformationis its relationship to time. First, the coding creates constantpressure to generate information. Secondly, informationcannot be repeated. Information, once communicated,becomes an event. As events pieces of information stillhave their meaning, but lose their informative value and aremerely redundant.

The ongoing transformation or de-actualization ofinformation into noninformation keeps the system running

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and accelerates the tempo. The hunt for information is thedefining characteristic of journalism and the source of itsfrenzy. There is also the pressure for novelty: mass mediamust always have something new to report. Although thispressure is also present in art, politics and (particularly)science, this modern approach is particularly crass in thecase of the mass medias reporting something new everyday, and so identifying everything from the previous day asold. At the operating level of society, the mass mediaaccordingly produce the effect that has gone into the theoryof postmodernism as the ongoing revision of the past, a keyfeature of the postmodern era. Ultimately, postmodernism isitself an effect of functional differentiation.

The Mass Media and their Environment

Mass media, according to Luhmanns hypothesis, constituteone of the functional systems of modern society, a systemthat owes its increased effectiveness to the differentiation,operational closure and autopoietic autonomy of the systemconcerned. How this system maintains its own autopoiesis(which means simply fulfilling its own social function, andso producing reality for society) is the subject of thefollowing considerations: First, Luhmann studies thesystem in its internal differentiation. Second, adopting adifferent point of view, the link between the media and theenvironment internal to society is reviewed in terms of thestructural coupling. Finally, in an epistemological reflec-tion, the hypothesis of the social construction of all realityis explained, using the mass media as an example. Thebasic building blocks characterizing Luhmanns perspectiveare the context of functional differentiation of the societalsystem, the duality in the functioning of the media, and theconstructivist view of reality.

Luhmann refers to the familiar distinctionincludingthe possibility of items in mass media research overlappingbetween programs as news and documentary reports(features), advertising and entertainmentwhich consti-tutes the most important internal structure of the system ofmass media. However, he does not ask how far reality isaccurately represented, whether it is manipulated, what thenature of entertainment happens to be, or whether theentertainment is good or bad, educational or trivial: what isof interest to him is how reality is constructed by thesetypes of programs, and what the effect is, in this case, at theprogram level of the coding information/noninformation.

The sector of news and features still corresponds mostclosely to our everyday expectations of a media function ofreproducing reality. Although information is offered here ina mode of neutrality and objectivity, closer analysis revealsthat the mass media are not greatly interested in truth, andnot at all interested in scientifically generated truth. The

problem faced by the mass media is therefore theirunavoidable, yet intended and regulated, selectivity.

The decisive insight is that the media cannot create anypoint-for-point correspondence to their environment, evenif they wanted to: this would mean that individuals, andabove all the system itself, would be unable to distinguishthemselves from their environment. The media would be inthe same situation as Ireneo Funes in Jorge Luis Borgesstory The relentless memory. Ireneo Funes had aremarkable memory that recorded everything in vivid,life-like detail. This quickly led to Funes lying on his bed,unable to act. He was temporally synchronized with hisenvironment.

To be able to act and even observe, systems must workwith the distinction between internal and external complex-ity; to perceive at all, they must separate themselves fromtheir environment and copy this differentiation of systemand environment into the system with the distinction ofself-reference and external reference. It is not surprisingthat empirical research has identified such selectors: theseare indicators of the system-specific type of realityconstruction of the media. The important thing here is notso much the fact of the selection as the mass medias needto process the difference between information/noninforma-tion for society. Many of these selection routines arefamiliar. Conflicts are preferred, as are events that departfrom normal expectations. Quantities are particularly easyto present as information, because figures are alwaysdifferent from other figures, suggesting that they reflectsomething new. Information with a local referent ispreferred. Behavior that violates norms and standardsattracts special attention, particularly if it reaches the stageof scandal. There is a clear media preference for unusualevents and moral judgments. These are all examples of howevents are turned into information and information intonews, which then affects our view of social reality.

Luhmann takes this empirically confirmed hypothesis ofthe self-selectivity of the mass media and pushes on tofurther conclusions. What appears in the media as reality issimply their own product. They are not dependent on theenvironment for the ways in which the outside world isbeing communicated about. The awareness of selection hasalways aroused the suspicion of manipulation, withoutresearch reaching clear conclusions in this regard.

People assume that vested interests, commercial andpolitical, control the mass media; and in individual casesthis can be shown to be the case. However, thesedisclosures have had no significant effect on the mode offunctioning of the mass media, as there is no alternative tothe system of the media. Instead, society has accepted thedeficiencies of the media. The mass media seem simulta-neously to nurture and to undermine their own credibility.The media deconstruct themselves, since they reproduce

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the constant contradiction of their declarative and theirperformative text components with their own operations.

This contradiction is reproduced through advertising,although in a different way. The basis for advertising is notthe creation of a pretty appearance of reality: on thecontrary, advertising openly states its desire to manipulate,and by doing so it is better able to influence the motivesand memory of its target audience. Advertising helpspeople deceive themselves, while loudly proclaiming itsown dishonesty. Even eleven-year-olds know that advertis-ing is trying to sell them something, that the familyconsuming margarine is not always as happy as it seemsin the advertisements, and that its happiness is certainly nota result of the margarine it eats on its bread. However, thatis not important. Advertising exploits paradoxes in themotivations of its audience: a mass product is offeredexclusively, but the product appears only in the back-ground, as if selling it is not the issue. The trend towardsgreater individuality is proclaimed everywhere, with theresult that a whole generation is wearing trainers anddesigner clothes. The decisive element in advertising is notthe product, but rather its latent function of supplyingpeople who have no taste with taste. The most importantfunction of advertising is manufacturing a reality thatsimultaneously creates redundancy and variety in newways for everyday life.

The most difficult mass media program is entertainment.Even Luhmann seems to feel that here the boundaries blur.Entertainment is fiction, conveying facts, advertising andnarration (memory) in a colorful medley that makes itdifficult to identify a clear structure. Mass media entertain-ment can presume that the viewer is able to observe thestart and end of a story, in contrast to their own life. Asecond and fictitious level of reality is created; but becausethis is imaginary it needs information, which is where themass media, with their coding of information/noninforma-tion, enter the scene. Although it is fictional, entertainmentalso has to be realistic. It must have some link to theeveryday world of the viewer, or at least to the viewerseveryday world as the media imagine it. This is the pointwhere the mechanism of self-reference and externalreference operates. Films, stories or talk shows must createtheir own plausibility. They live from stories, actions, etc.that they have created themselves. On the other hand, theyhave to deal with a viewer whose interest has to be roused.The closure of self-reference in entertainment is preventedfrom collapsing into tautology by the external reference thatis processed at the same time. This has the effect that theviewer always crops up in entertainment and is constantlyreferred to, as if Tristram Shandy was the original for allentertainment.

Niklas Luhmann goes on to argue that these featureshighlight the special contribution the entertainment segment

of the mass media produce; entertainment enables one tolocate oneself in the world as it is portrayed [...] What isoffered as entertainment does not commit anybody in aparticular way, but there are sufficient clues (which onewould find neither in the news nor in advertising) for workon ones own identity. Fictional reality and real realityapparently remain different, and because of this, individualsremain self-sufficient, as far as their identity is concerned.

How do the mass media come into contact with theirsocial environment in the first instance, if they form anautopoietic, self-referential closed system? Luhmannsanswer is straightforward. The mass media link to theirenvironment through structural coupling. Structural meansthe reciprocal dependence (without having to postulatecausal dependency) of programme types on specificenvironmental states of the system.

Advertising, for example, is dependent on business;entertainment on the art system and everyday life; and thereference point for news is the political system. The factthat there is overlapping is unusual, but the difference in thereference points enables us to identify overlapping as such.Luhmann notes that these different environmental referencepoints for programmes do not lead to the breakdown of thesystemic character of the pattern, because they use astandard technological medium. However, this is merelythe surface: the less obvious structure is the societalfunction of the mass media, i.e. creating the conditions forfurther communication, which do not themselves have tobe commented in the process. Mass media create abackground reality which functions as the memory ofsociety.

The societal function of the mass media is therefore notto be found in the volume of information produced, butrather in the memory generated, which allows for thepossibility of communication; in this respect, the socialsystem of the mass media performs a (societal) functionakin to that of the economy, though not in the business ofproducing wealth; or that of the political system, thoughnot about retaining or gaining power, but rather in thepersisting reproduction of forgetting and remembering. Andin this respect, the main function of the mass media is itsirritability of societal communication.

In the long term, the societal task of the media is not thesubstantive production of information of and for themoment, but rather the creation of certain assumptionsabout reality, which actors draw onbut do not have toexplicatein social communication, and on which they canrely as points of connection without feeling that they live indifferent, incommensurable worlds. This is why the topicsare structurally more important than the substantive viewstouted in the media.

The differentiation of topics and opinions is an importantmethod of reporting, and also has a dual effect. On the one

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hand, opinions can be treated as facts in this way: they canbe reported and they are informational. On the other hand, areality is created which is not required to be consensual. Somany opinions are reported on the pro and cons of nuclearpower, the Shell Brent Spar platform incident or climatechange that the real reasons for their contested nature arelost in the diversity of opinions, leaving only the divergenceand conflict of views as the basis of our knowledge aboutthese phenomena. We only acquire the ability to observeobserving, and infer that the contested nature of the issuesis the reality. The greater the volume of information, thegreater the uncertaintybut also the greater the temptationto form ones own opinion, defend it as such and leave it atthat.

At the same time, the unity of the communication mustbe preserved, if not as consensus, then in some other formso that further processing is secure. The media do this bymaking available communication for individual motivationconstellations. This is complicated by the fact that massmedia production is unable to address actual individualsdirectly. It can only cover the person as a generalizationbased on stereotypes. This is done through fictitiousindividualization: in the news, entertainment or advertising,the general reference point is a simulated individualnotan actual person as a biochemical and intellectual socialunit, but rather a construct, the man in the street who isinterested in news, the consumer or the slouch who has tobe entertained. The central characteristic is the paradox ofthe de-individualized individual.

It would be a mistake at this point to launch into a jeremiadon the alienating function of the media and the levelingpressures they generate. The subtlety of Luhmanns analysislies in the way he shows that this process increases freedomand structure. Stereotypes (or schemata) do not force us torepeat them. They leave us the choice of following them ornot; but they are instruments of forgetting and learning in theway they bring order into the flood of information whileproviding a setting for individual self-definition, if only inones own home. From the point of view of society, structuralcoupling mediated via schemata has the benefit of accelera-tion of structural changes in such a way that, if thisacceleration is successful, it will not break the structuralcoupling of media and individuals, but will simply link upother schemata. From the point of view of the individual, theadvantage of schemata is that they structure memory but donot determine action.

Highly complicated interactions that cannot be reducedto pressure are generated between media and the individual.As in the theatre, the individual is put in front of a scene butoutside the setting, leaving him free to choose withoutreally having a choice, because that would bring the entirecomplexity of the world down about his ears again. Theindividual is compelled to construct his identity or self in

dialogue with the media, and within boundaries set by themedia.

The Theorist and the Mass Media

In concluding his theoretical exploration of the modernmass media, Luhmann shifts his analysis to an epistemo-logical basis and asks reflexively about the point of view ofthe observerboth the mass media and the theoretician.For both, it is true that the question of justification, whichwould lead to an infinite regress, is replaced by the questionabout the observer; and whoever wishes to give reasonsfor his own experience or actions must observe himself asan observer and, in doing so, allow access to the choice ofthe distinctions which guide his observing. Anyone raisingthis question radicalizes the idea of the enlightenment ofliberating themselves from their self-imposed powerless-ness by facing the question of their standpoint. Thisreflexively dissolves the traditionally established absoluteslike God, Nature and Reason, leaving the contingency ofall criteria and of all possible observer positions.

The elucidation of enlightenment leads to another versionof the paradox: It calls for something to be made visiblewhich must remain invisible. It contradicts itself. It executes aperformative self-contradiction and thus avoids appearingdogmatic or prescribing cures. The paradox of the observeralso overcomes the difference common among sociologistsand intellectuals between critical and affirmative.

What is fruitful about a theory that is ultimately rooted ina paradox? We believe that Luhmann, through his analysis,corrects three key assumptions in media research:

First, he no longer proceeds on the basis of a causalrelationship between the mass media and society, which seeksdirect effects as if the media were deliberately seeking tomanipulate.Media affect public opinion, but by framing topicsrather than directly. Each individual piece of information maybe wrong, but the topic itself structures public communication,providing structures for further communication.

His second insight is that media do not disseminatetruths, but rather organize information flows and ensurenovelties. The term information does not have anyobjective status. In communication, information is theresult of communication; its truth-value requires morenew information and communicationand so on.

Third, it is clear that the media operate highly selective-ly, so that they do not function as a mirror and channel forthe public, but rather generate their own reality. This createsdegrees of freedom between viewers and the media, whichhad previously not been perceived as such. Any piece ofinformation can be accepted or rejected, creating thepossibility of bifurcation in further communication withoutthe need to assume an underlying plan or genuine reality.

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It accordingly remains to be settled whether the massmedia play a material role in the construction of socialreality despite their high degree of selectivity. Or, asLuhmann puts it in his concluding sentence: Wetherefore repeat our initial question. It is not: what isthe case, what surrounds us as world and as society? It israther, how is it possible to accept information about theworld and about society as information about reality whenone knows how it is produced?

Anyone seeking an answer to this question needs tocritically examine Luhmanns observations about Thereality of the mass media, which starts with the thesis:Everything we know about our society and even the worldwe live in, we know... etc.

Further Reading

Katz, E. 1960. Communication research and the image of society.Convergence of two traditions. American Journal of Sociology,65, 435440.

Lazarsfeld, P. F., & Merton, R. K. [1948] 1957. Mass communication,popular taste and organized social action. In B. Rosenberg & D.M. White (Ed.), Mass culture: The popular arts in America (pp.457473). New York: Free Press.

Luhmann, N. 2002 [1995]. Theories of distinction: Redescribing thedescriptions of modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress.

Luhmann, N. 2000 [1996]. The reality of the mass media. Stanford,CA: Stanford University Press.

Gotthard Bechmann is Senior Scientist at Karlsruhe Institute forTechnology (KIT), Institute for Technology Assessment and SystemAnalysis (ITAS) and Professor and Vice-director of the InternationalResearch Center for Social Consequences of Scientific and Techno-logical Development and Innovation at Lomonosov State UniversityMoscow. He has written extensively on the issue of the socialconstruction and communication of risk, theory of society andsociology of knowledge and technology.

Nico Stehr is Karl Mannheim Professor of Cultural Studies atZeppelin University, Germany. He has published extensively on themodern society as a knowledge society and the knowledge basedeconomy. He is one of the authors of the recently published HartwellPaper on climate policies.

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