Spring 2010
MS Ideas
“Subliminal and docile acceptance of media impact has made them prisons without walls for their human users.”-Marshall Mcluhan
Despite the triteness of the following statement, it is necessary for the major point of this work: The Internet has changed everything. It will continue to change everything. How and to what extent it has changed us and the world we live in is a picture that will only become clear to us as a culture when a new all encompassing media destroys our apparent sense of normalcy. Niklas Luhmann’s work, “The Reality of Mass Media” uses a constructivist autopoeitic approach to understand the system and operation of mass media (and society in general). His analysis of the function of the mass media is valuable. However, at the time this was originally published (1996) the internet had just begun to be available for civilian use. The internet is the wrench which threatens to undermine his entire thesis (more on this below). Marshall Mcluhan on the other hand paid a lot of attention throughout his works on new media and how they changed everything along their respective time lines. Despite the work, “Understanding Media” being written in 1964 and his death in 1980 his work embodies a keenness as to the effects of new media. Because his focus was on the changing nature of society and culture in relation to the introduction of new media, Mcluhan is better suited to the task of predicting just how we might expect the internet to affect everything it (may or may not) touch. Together, Luhmann and Mcluhan’s understanding of the nature of media gives us a dynamic insight into the changing media environment and specifically the rapid transformation of our internet soaked culture.
First, let us examine and understand Luhmann’s system of the Mass Media, then we will be better positioned to understand the similarities and differences that penetrate in the internet age. He posits that the Mass Media is a self-created and self-sustaining system in an environment with other similarly self-created and sustaining systems. Mass Media as defined by Luhmann, “…includes all those institutions of society which make use of copying technologies to disseminate communication.” Also, “Interaction is ruled out by the interposition of technology…”. A play is not considered Mass Media because the communication only exists in the space while the play is happening. If a recording is made and copied for distribution it becomes part of the mass media. Also important in his definition is the manufactured nature of any reproduction. Hand copied books do not count as being part of mass media, printed books are. Digitally copied materials would be considered part of the mass media as well.
In a constructivist sense the media is a self-created entity that focuses on other-reference, constantly looking outside of itself at other systems and reacting to outside irritations. Narratives are created and utilized according to what could be considered a formula. What is considered information and non-information is heavily dependent on time. If it already happened and was reported on it is no longer considered news. Unless of course the information is considered antique or retro, then it can be recycled with a new perspective on it (a great example would be the VH1 series that began with, “I Love the 80’s”). The memory of the system plays an important part in allowing for the creation of reality as well. Things are forgotten to make room for more or redundant news and for conflicting information to be absorbed. The mass media system is so huge and is constantly being irritated by outside forces but that is what allows it function so well. According to Luhmann:
The more complex the system becomes the more it exposes itself to irritations, the more variety the world can permit without relinquishing any reality- and the more the system can afford to work with negations, with fictions, with ‘merely analytical’ or statistical assumptions which distance it from the world as it is.
News and in depth reporting rely on categorizing information to make sense of the world. Often news is based around a certain selection of narratives to produce news stories. The selectors are as follows; surprise, conflicts, quantities and growth, local relevance, and finally norm violations and moral judgments. We can all think of examples for each of these because they are constantly in use. Conflicts are great for the system because they are ongoing and the outcome is not known. Norm violations and moral judgments also known as SCANDALS are great outside irritants for the mass media. When a norm is violated by a public figure we can all watch and judge them accordingly without having to forgive them. Scandals unite us, “…the mass media are able to generate greater feeling of common concern and outrage than in other ways…the norm is only generated through the violation…” A perfect example of the media frenzy surrounding a scandal would of course be the recent transgressions of Tiger Woods.
The scandal, as Luhmann posits also allows for the media to reinforce societal norms. An integral part of Woods scandal is that it is also tied up in with the advertising industry (the economic systems coupling with mass media system). Advertisement relies on the media for programming just as importantly as the mass media relies on advertisement for revenue. As Woods’ scandal blew up in the news and the size of his transgressions were made more public, his endorsers lost their faith in him. Not in his athletic ability, but in his ability to sell his product, his character to the audience. According to Luhmann, the mass media and advertisers have a set of assumptions about the audience, which allows them to function on the scale that it does and in the manner, which it does:
‘The Person’ is therefore implied in all program strands of the mass media, but not, of course as a real reproduction of his or her….consciousness…but only as a social construct. The construct of the ‘cognitively more or less informed, competent, morally responsible person’ helps the function system of the mass media constantly to irritate itself with regard to its biological or psychic human environment.
The mass media assumes then that we have better moral standards than those put on display for judgment during a scandal, and that we would never buy anything from a company that endorses promiscuous athletes. That assumption about the audience continues along these lines:
In the system of the mass media this construction of the person reproduces the myth of service to the person. This person is ‘interested’ in information in vital ways; so he must be informed. He is morally prone to temptations; so he must constantly be taught the difference between good and bad behavior. He drifts out of control in the flow of circumstances; so he must be presented with a range of possible decisions- or… ‘mental orientation’.
In sum, the mass media is a constructivist observational system. It communicates what it observes based on it’s own reality displayed through certain paradigms. The communication works on assumptions about the audience as a social construction, which is then reinforced by the mass media communication. The construction of reality by the mass media has broad ranging repercussions because our concept of freedom is based on our ability to know what real reality is and make choices based on that.
The system of mass media has been blown apart with the wide availability of the internet. The distinction between creator and viewer has greatly blurred. On the web people can post and read first hand experiences. Information is produced, distributed and read across the systems and on the periphery. Importantly, this information does not need to go through the filter of the mass media communication system.
For more insight on how the internet may change the system of the mass media let us turn to the work of Marshall Mcluhan. The internet took off in popularity more than a decade after his death in 1980, and “Understanding Media” was published in 1964. None of this is a handicap for his work because he paid attention to how new technology changed and interrupted social patterns. He paid attention to the ephemeral and human reactions to it. Mcluhan was sensitive to how different media effected our perceptions of reality and re-orders the utility and purposes of previous media. All of which is exactly what is needed here to bring Luhmann’s system theory into the 21st century.
The narrative and purpose of a medium changes when a new medium is introduced. “Radio changed the form of the news story as much as it altered the film image in the talkies. TV caused drastic changes in radio programming, and in the form of the thing or documentary novel.” The internet which has absorbed all other media is forcing the traditional institutions of the mass media to struggle to remain relevant. More often than not these traditional institutions of mass media are relying on the appeal of scandal and emotional epithets to draw viewers. Some of the more successful internet sources outside of the institution of mass media utilize the same formulas to gain and hold viewers attention despite being outside of the mass media institutions. For example, Perez Hilton is ranked the 190th most viewed web page in the United States. The site’s entire existence is built off of scandal and thusly morality reinforcements and judgments as explained by Luhmann. The magic of Perez Hilton is that he covers Hollywood, which is a bottomless pit of irritants for his voyeuristic criticisms. On the one hand information coming from every system has never been so abundant. On the other hand to keep attention of viewers (needed for the mass media to justify it’s existence) we are forced to choke on scandal after scandal being pumped from the traditional sphere.
Electric technology to Mcluhan is an extension of our central nervous system. Our nervous system has been drawn outside of us with each new electric medium. In order for people to cope with the new instant electrical technology we must numb ourselves to not be overwhelmed by it. While we have access to all of this information cutting across Luhmann’s systems, it is packaged in an overwhelming medium with absolutely too much information for anyone to absorb. This allows for an even greater possibility of realities and inevitably even greater distraction due to information (content) overload for the viewer. Mcluhan observes how, “Mental breakdown of varying degrees is the very common result of uprooting and inundation with new information and endless new patterns of information.”
With time and people getting used to the new patterns that the internet brings along with it our anxiety caused by the new technology will (hopefully) diminish. The ease with which every user can be a creator will forever change the face of the mass media system, possibly by making it more effective in it’s ability to recreate itself. For example Moeller describes in “Luhmann Explained” how currency is such an effective aspect of the economic system that it cuts into the other systems. In this way too, media and mass media technology enabled by the proliferation of the internet, allows it to effectively seep across the boundaries of all other systems and incorporate them into its pre-existing functions and patterns. A positive outcome of this user/creator melding would of course be the Tweets sent during the Iranian elections of the abuse by the police. The conversations on Twitter allowed the international community to know and what was going on while simultaneously condemning the government of Iran for its human rights abuses.
Advertising is also changing its face within the changing media ecosystem. As Mcluhan describes, “The continuous pressure is to create ads in the image of audience motives and desires. The product matters less as the audience participation increases.” This is exemplified by the numerous recent “crowdsourced” ad campaigns. Mountain Dew has been working directly with consumers of the product, through the internet, to determine the color, message, design and flavor or their new line. OgilvyOne and advertising agency is currently holding a video contest to see who can sell a red brick in the cleverest way. This contest is also being done via the internet. These types of campaigns that connect directly to the consumer along with the massive amounts of data collected about internet users via Facebook and Google are also changing the previous assumptions of the mass media system of the assumed viewer. With more information about viewers, the institutions are better able to market and target people. The ability for marketers to simultaneously target users consciousness and use them in their advertisement campaigns with the internet as it’s main vehicle this coupling becomes infinitely more powerful and perhaps is creating a new system that Luhmann did not see coming: The Adfo-Tainment-Industrial Complex.
In all, the internet as disruptive all encompassing technology has a two fold effect on the mass media. First, it takes away the legitimacy of institutionally communicated news because of the huge amount of information available across all subsystems provided by experts, first hand observers and anyone with an internet hookup. Second, the internet works to strengthen advertisers ability to latch on to our consciousness by way of data mining and crowdsourced campaigns which is sure to result in an even more warped perception of reality.
[1] Luhmann, Niklas. The Reality of Mass Media. 2. Polity Press, 2000. 2. Print.
[2] Luhmann, Niklas, et al, Pg 7
[3] Luhmann, Niklas, et al. Pgs 28-29
[4] Luhmann, Niklas, et al, Pg 29
[5] Luhmann, Niklas, et al, Pg 74
[6] Luhmann, Niklas, et al, Pg 75
[7] Mcluhan, Marshall , Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, McGraw Hill, 1964 Pg 53
[9] Mcluhan, Marshall, Et al. Pg 47
[10] Moeller, Hans-Georg, Luhmann Explained, Open Court, 2006, Pgs27-28
[11] Mcluhan, Marshall, Et al. Pg 226
[12] Another way advertisement is seeping into our subconscious minds has been by way of increased product placements in television shows which people now view in huge numbers on the internet. However, I did not focus on entertainment in this analysis but it is indeed an integral part to the system of mass media in both Luhmann and Mcluhan’s analysis.
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