M.K.
Dear colleague,
Niklas Luhmann made the statement that what we know about reality we know from television. Luhmann meant two things by this: firstly, that the multitude of global events and interrelationships that determine our world are beyond our direct experience, one of his examples at the time was, for example, the so-called "acid rain"; one could, of course, also think of "climate change"; secondly, that by watching television or reading the newspaper, we generate a common knowledge about reality. A common understanding of current issues or problems is, in this sense, a consequence of the fact that we watch the same news and receive information from the same sources. So it is a consequence of what you call "macro-communication".
Is there currently a shared knowledge of Corona in the face of changing media use, and how is this produced or influenced by macro-communication?
I send my best regards, M.K
CD.
Dear colleague,
thanks for the post. Looking at the mass media, given their actually dwindling relevance in the state of society in lockdown, I think it is central because they are experiencing a certain revival. In this respect, I am happy to engage with the question. However, I must ask for a small correction: Luhmann writes at the beginning of the reality of mass media that we know what we know about the world, the society we live in, from the media (sic!). The focus on television comes a little later, which I find not uninteresting. He ascribes to the media the function of providing us with knowledge that would otherwise be inaccessible to us (think here of the central function of media in conveying socially authenticated semantics, for example love). Mass-media and thus mass-distributed content can thus generate similar stocks of knowledge and, I find this point central especially in the context of Corona, generate shared stocks of symbols (from various sign systems and thus of course also images, lexis to lines of argumentation). This is, as it were, their communicative structural potential, which has suffered somewhat in view of the differentiation of the media in the past ten years. So we would have to add with a view to many members of society and their media biography: What we know about the world etc, we know less and less from "classical mass media", but increasingly from so-called "social media". This is where knowledge about Corona seems to be crystallising, in thousands of tweets and posts etc. And here I would answer your first question: no, there doesn't seem to be a shared knowledge about Corona on a broad scale, but there is in different, sometimes very large groups (I'm talking about the meso level here). This starts with the selection of the podcast of one virologist and not the other and goes all the way to subscribing to the tweets of both the Robert Koch Institute and the WHO, whose contents do not always correspond. So differentiation here absolutely prevents shared knowledge.
Now comes another but... Paradoxically, however, classic mass media are currently being strengthened, and this is precisely due to differentiation. For example, when different positions, known from social media (see above), take a seat together in talk shows, when newspapers compare the different guidelines of official institutions (RKI and WHO), when Angela Merkel gives a television speech with the intention of addressing as many people as possible. This shows the "old strength" of the mass media, to want to produce knowledge for all, to discuss different things, to discover red threads, etc. The knowledge, as you put it, is the knowledge of the people. The knowledge, as you have formulated it, that is produced in macro-communication (I know, Luhmann virtually detested the term) is thus the result of the perspectivisation on the differentiated world (corona) observation of the social media. It seems that this accompanying desambiguation of too many vaguenesses that are tweeted and posted helps the "old leading media" to gain new significance.
Their crisis communication clearly shows their potential.
And with that, I end my replica for the time being, with best collegial regards, of course. CD.
M.K.
Dear colleague,
I am happy to take up your distinction between the disambiguating function (or: fiction) of the so-called leading media, i.e. primarily the public television stations and internet presences - including such podcasts as that of virologist Drosten and his colleague Kekule - as well as the print media and the more or less speculative multiplication of perspectives in the so-called social media. In a certain sense, these would also have to include the classical, small-scale public spheres, i.e. table conversations, pub rounds, the conversation at the workplace, where, if one follows John Dewey, news is transformed into versions of reality. So there is no way out of the mediality of dealing with the pandemic. Nevertheless, I would be interested in the actions of the leading media, in how they have a desambiguating effect.
First of all, the topic was condensed into a crisis that could be experienced, through the number of reports, through the involvement of experts, through the means of counting and updating infections, etc. At the same time, renowned experts were brought in at an early stage. At the same time, renowned experts were called in early on, whose opinions, as paradoxical as it may sound at first, have the effect of reinforcing uncertainty and the crisis. Exemplary for this expert view is, for example, the virologist Drosten, who provides a scientific assessment, i.e. one that communicates its limitations.
Thirdly, the media actually took over the function of communicating political announcements from the very beginning by giving a lot of space to the speeches of political decision-makers (first: Spahn, then above all Laschet and Söder, the Chancellor). The transition between the focus of attention, the critical accompaniment of political events and the direct proclamation and support of political decisions seems to be quite fluid. The question is how mesocommunication deals with these unification efforts.
With collegial greetings, M.K.
CD.
Dear colleague,
other interaction systems had to be taken care of in the meantime, hence my reply only today.
All right, let's stay a little longer with the functions of the individual levels and forms of media. First, the disambiguation of the so-called mass media. I wrote that their true potential is revealed in the crisis (somewhat pathetically). Basically, they broadcast (e.g. Merkel's and Steinmeier's speeches), thus potentially infinitely spreading and multiplying, and in doing so they have to draw on resources that are connectable in various micro- and meso-communicates (so in TV and the newspaper we see the 100th diagram, the clearest graphic that tries to visualise the infected and the spreading in a way that everyone can understand, etc.).
You identify three functions: condense, disseminate, proclaim. At least that is how I read your letter.
In doing so, they deliver unambiguity, they have to, because too much differentiation is not possible in a two-line headline from a purely linguistic economic point of view, moreover, it contradicts the obvious logic of mass dissemination: every message is a selection and an incision that has to communicate its value. It is precisely in view of the multitude of media messages pro and con and not both and. However, it can be observed that on the one hand they take on different functions - and here it is precisely those of deepening/condensing and "proclamation" that (still) clearly demonstrate their potential contrary to the meso level - and on the other hand they (have to) continually fish for new news on the meso level. And here we see another paradox: the mass media have to "live convergence", so to speak, in order to be able to communicate their potential, they have to refer to the Twitter accounts of politicians and virologists, pick up the most interesting private and professional solutions for the lockdown and present them as newsworthy (newsworthy as an adjective). And because they spread and multiply, what is selected (even by chance) becomes something supposedly unambiguous, which is possibly replaced or expanded in the next article.
Communication at the meso level has other tasks or, better, other possibilities. Of course, this is also about standardisation efforts in the use and selection of addressees and content (keyword: filter bubble), but also about something else. And here I would definitely want to expand your talk of the "versions of reality", maybe even change it... None of the levels provides us with reality, they all produce their version. On the meso (and also the micro) level, however, something happens that the mass media refer to: Appropriation (always inspiring: de Certeau). And here, in all the tweets and table conversations and notices and posts, it becomes apparent what (initially) becomes perceptible under group conditions, what is semiotically negotiated - what all that is read and heard is seen as and taken up again, how the lockdown is dealt with communicatively, what is taken up and questioned in mass media standardisation. And Drosten does this when he criticises newspaper reports as too pointed on his Twitter account, which in turn is taken up and forwarded and at some point disseminated by the mass media. The meso level averages out, spreads, exaggerates, agrees, generates. This is precisely where its potential becomes apparent:
In sum, this level is more agile, more flexible, more opportunistic, faster, more creative, more diverse, more discursive, more differentiated (in breadth) and more superficial, they (the meso-communications) correct, supply, negotiate mass media - taken on its own, however, and this is what many often see as critical, an account, a table conversation only demonstrates a form of appropriation of a selection of reality. And with that, I salute you post-Easter
CD.
M.K.
Dear colleague,
I am fascinated by your description of the fluid dynamics of the meso level. I understand you to mean that the variety of social-media communications, whether on facebook, via twitter, in the press conference and in family conversations or at the garden fence (the regulars' table is currently still out of the question; this form of at least partial isolation of small groups and the constriction of the possibilities of corrective and confirmatory gossip in the social space inhabited by the body would have to be discussed separately), forms the pool of realities, so to speak, which is managed by the mass media (television, newspapers, magazines). I would then describe this process with Alfred Schütz as the two-sided process of, on the one hand, presenting something like a socially derived knowledge of the pandemic and the state countermeasures and, on the other hand, announcing this as (verified) facts with the involvement of experts, decision-makers, thus presenting it as socially accepted.
If the description of the circulating multiplicity of realities in meso-communication is to some extent coherent and also the conclusion that the mass media (or macro-communication) in accessing these realities provide themselves with this function of order (and perhaps cannot do otherwise), then the question that arises for me is what forms this, as you say, unification takes and what effects go hand in hand with which forms of this "fulfilment of function". Two aspects would catch my eye here:
- Forms: Programmes and newspapers that see themselves as leading media mark their actions as enlightenment and sort what appears to be newsworthy morally, but conceal the moral of good bad under the distinction of real and fake (I wanted to write: of right or wrong, the intermediate position of right and wrong between morality and truth could also be discussed); simply put: leading media present themselves as moral authorities in crisis.
- Effects: The problem of knowledge anchored in the life-world, however, consists only of an overhead view from questions of the correctness of information or its moral evaluation. If one thinks of knowledge from Schütz's or Dewey's point of view, then the focus is not on versionality, but on the relevance of information for the individual and communal conduct of life. People, from the Deweyan perspective, have a vital interest in information not as facts (or truth) but as clues to how they can shape their lives now and in the near future, such as: Can I send my children to school or am I putting them at risk? How dangerous is it to go shopping? How can my café survive the crisis and with it my life plan? Etc.
- The question would then be what happens when relevance to life meets instruction from the media, i.e. when questions of relevance are counteracted by fact checks. Now, shortly before Pentecost, at least part of this conflict seems to have spilled over from the digital world to the "street".
My warmest regards
M.K.