Die europäische Öffentlichkeit – Ein Konstrukt der Massenmedien?
Die europäische Öffentlichkeit – Ein Konstrukt der Massenmedien?

Summary/Abstract: Unlike the national-grown public spheres, the European public sphere is a construction of the social system of mass-media. The reality of mass-media, as conceptualized by Niklas Luhmann in his theory of social systems, is a dichotomy consisting of a »real reality« and an »observed reality«. In Kantian terminology, this means that the mass-media create a “transcendental illusion” that can easily be suspected as an attempt to manipulate. Nevertheless, the emerging European public sphere must use this uncontrollable reality construction of the national medias in order to reach a discursive common ground. The paper underlines the systemic operations that empower the mass-media-system to impose a creation of its own rationality as a commonly shared European public sphere.

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