When translation pressures between social horizons of meaning create the cardinal effect of social differentiation, a corresponding sociology of multiple differentiation can only establish its own connection to reality, like that of any other context of meaning, as a kind of indirect reference. Joachim Renn's analysis takes a media-theoretical detour: it initially focuses on the significance of various communication media for the self-referential formatting of possible subjects of reference, and only then on the reference claims of sociology itself. It becomes evident that this pragmatic reconstruction of a media-based understanding of the world, unlike the widely prevalent constructivism, aligns with the realistic intuition of sociology as an empirical science.