Symbolically generalized communication media structurally produce inevitable disappointments.

Evidence

It is likely that one of the generally ascertainable risks of differentiated communication media is that, along with the degree of their symbolic articulation and the degree of consciousness of selection, the discrepancy between the possible and the actual also increases and, in one way or another, comes to influence attitudes. The symbolic elements of the media-codes can encompass very diverse situations and heterogeneous motives. They are, therefore, highly generalized and in this function use idealizations and fictions – such as the concept of absolute intersubjective certainty in relationships, the concept of sovereignty, or the idea of a feeling of love being directed at one particular person, yet remaining completely free of constraints in the way one loves the other. The disappointments which then occur belong to the structural (and not only to the interactional) risks of differentiated communication media and they too have to be controlled by means of their symbolic codes or extra codes. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 756

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s thesis: the ‘idealizations and fictions’ (absolute certainty, sovereignty, unconditional love) parallel the idealized trust Stevens places in Lord Darlington’s moral authority — system trust resting on symbolic generalization that must later manage its own disappointments.
• DEFINE: Clarifies what Luhmann means by structural (as opposed to merely interactional) risks of communication media.