ABSTRACT
Luhmann tells us that the ‘mass media are not media in the sense of conveying information from those who know to those who do not know. They are media to the extent that they make available background knowledge and carry on writing it as a starting point for communication.’1 Background knowledge is stored in the system’s memory:
The Legal System in the Memory of the Media
Memory requires the grouping of experiences into consistent frameworks of meaning, and their retention as the basis of comparison for further experience. Each functioning social subsystem (law, politics, media, etc.) communicates by actualising its memory, and assuming that there is a reality that can be known and represented by utilising that memory. However, each functioning system has a different memory and set of consistent frameworks, and makes different assumptions about the reality which it represents in its communications. The mass media observes events and then relies on its programmes to determine which events
1 Luhmann 2000: 66. 2 Luhmann 2000: 65.
