Modal ontology of television: how to create social objects

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, April, 1999 by Lars Lundsten

During the Gulf War in 1991, there was a deliberate effort by the Allied Command to stay in control of the war reports. Partly, they did so in order to avoid information leaks to the enemy. But it was far more important to avoid shifts in public opinion back in the U.S.

A war consists of brute facts as well as of institutional facts. The blend varies from time to time during the campaign (cf. Searle 1995, 89-90). As far as physical strength and firepower are concerned, a war consists of brute facts. But winning a battle and, even more, winning a war are events very much dependent on institutional facts. There are certain common practices to establish victory. When a soldier is hit by a shell and blown out of existence, no social institutions can change that brute fact.

In war reports, however, we primarily face only institutional facts. In a television report somebody tells us something about the war. Telling somebody something is a part of social reality. It relies on some brute facts, sound waves, and electric impulses - but it is social in itself. Television as a technical device serves as physical foundation for this social phenomenon. Television as communicative practice is a part of our constructed social reality and a foundation of further social constructs.

My approach to television is inspired by the German phenomenologist Adolf Reinach's (1883-1917) theory of social acts ('speech acts') and by his ontological realism. In his spirit, I call this approach presentational. In its core we have the idea that television, essentially, is a medium. As such it enables social experience, i.e. communication. Television is an instrument used in order to present things, and not an instrument that enables us to observe things.

In J. R. Searle's speech act theory and ontology, there are many similarities to Reinach's philosophy. For this reason it is useful to make continued reference to both of them. As long as television is mistakenly understood as an extension of our perceptual senses, the contents are thought to be independently

existing physical objects, i.e. bona fide objects. In Searle's terminology, the perceptualist position indicates that we observe brute facts by means of television technology.

As a consequence of our presentational approach, we have to dismiss this view. Instead, we argue that television is concerned with social objects, i.e. objects that are dependent on people for their existence. Hence, the presentational position contains the idea that television is a vehicle for social reality.

There could have been a war in Vietnam without television. But since television became involved, there was no Vietnam War without it. During this particular war, we (i.e. people in the western industrial world) evolved a new species within social institutions: the television war. This institution has as its parts not only the usual physical and social objects included in most wars. It relies extensively on presentations provided by another social institution: television.