The Reality of the Mass Media

No doubt of that, the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann is one the most intriguing thinker of the 20th century, admired by many and misunderstood by other many. To build his theory of society he departed from the observation of the hypercomplexity of modern society. He sets aside what he called the old European tradition that conveived society as a sum of men - indivivuals - (in this way he conveives modern society as a nonhuman society!). This hypercomplexity gave birth to functional social systems (subsystems) to face the need to reduce the increasing complexity and deal with all the possibilities of communication and processing of information. To achieve this task the subsystems that emerged in society had to operate in a closed operative mode and in a cognitive openness. This theoretical framework allow the subsystems to evolve in an autopoietic (= self-reproduction) manner. The idea of "autopoiese" Luhmann gets from the biological theory from Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, originally applied to living organisms and psychic systems (also read from the same author: "Social Systems").
Thus these subsystems of society (Economy, Law, Religion, Politics) had to establish operational conditions creating their own programmes on base of a binary code (positive x negative). For instance, Economy's binary code - money x no money -, Law's - legal x illegal- , Religion's - faith x no faith.
The most interestin thing concerning Luhmann's theory is that it is based on interdisciplinarity. He mixes theories from cybernetic epistemology (Heinz von Foerster)and mathematics (Spencer Brown) to permit the observation of social systems through the study of mathematical forms, second order cybernetics and constructivist epistemology.
In this context we have one of this most interesting book ever written by Niklas Luhmann, which focus on what is known as the MASS MEDIA. He approaches the MASS MEDIA as one of the most important and interesting subsystem in modern society. This subsystem encloses the press, entertainmente and advertising. He postulates a "contructivist" stance to this subsystem that is not based on the binary code of real x unreal (real x false), because differently as people may think it is not operating on "the reality", as a kind of ontology, but this subsystem constructs its own "reality" based on its own programmes and codification. This perspective Luhmann gets from the second order cybernetics (Heinz von Foerster) and second order obsevation (Maturana & Varela). Luhmann points out that the MASS MEDIA is a system of self-observation of modern society. He refuses the idea that there is someone controlling the public opinion, because it is simply impossible as the hypercomplexity of our society cannot be controlled by a human being. The MASS MEDIA, as all other susbsystems in modern society, only communicate through communication. He claims: only communication can communicate!!.
If you want to look at press, entertainment and advertising from a different point of observation and to get rid of all humanistic theories that tried to describe and conceptualize what is called THE MASS MEDIA, DO NOT miss to read the book. I can assure that you will never more conceive of modern society in the old same way we were taught to. Open your mind and read The Reality of the Mass Media by Niklas Luhmann, although you may find it a difficult reading!! 

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