Page 100 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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Concepts and Models

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of economics (as we shall see in more detail in Chapter 8, differentiation
theorists usually say relatively little about commercialization, and this is
one of the greater ambiguities in the application of differentiation theory
to the media). The autonomous pole within the media field, moreover –
whichwasrepresentedbytheeliteprintpress–haslostgroundtothehet-
eronomous pole represented above all by commercial television. Finally,
the media themselves, consistent with Luhmann, Alexander et al., have
become more important in society – but with the consequence, accord-
ing to Bourdieu, that other cultural fields have lost autonomy, as they are
increasinglyinfluencedbythemassmedia.(Bourdieuarguesparticularly
that the growing prestige of the mass media has distorted the academic
field, which is increasingly dominated by “heteronomous” intellectu-
als whose prestige derives from outside academia.) Bourdieu and other
French scholars working in this tradition thus paint a complex picture in
which media change involves a substantial degree of de-differentiation.
THE QUESTION OF POWER. One of the criticisms most commonly leveled
against differentiation theory is that it pays no attention to power. Dif-
ferentiation theory is generally concerned with relations among social
institutions, not among agents or social interests, and it tends to imply
that with the process of differentiation power essentially withers away,
or becomes diffused to the point that it is not a significant social issue.
As it has been applied to the study of the media, differentiation theory
suggests that power should be most diffused and least concentrated –
therefore least significant – in the highly differentiated Liberal system.
Do we in fact find significant differences in the distribution of power
in the three systems we have outlined? Are there important differences
across systems in the degree of inequality regarding access to the media
and in the representation of interests and points of view?
There are literatures dealing with the relation of media to structures
of social and political power within various national traditions, but there
has really been no attempt to study this sort of question in a systematic
comparative way, so it is unfortunately difficult to answer these ques-
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tions with much certainty. All of the systems considered in this book
2 Summaries of Bourdieu’s field theory and its application to media studies can be found
in Benson (1998), Marliere (1998), Benson (2000), and Neveu (2001). Bourdieu never
wrote much directly on the media, only the relatively slight On Television (1998).
But there is a large community of media scholars, to a large extent concentrated in
sociology, who draw on his ideas.
3 Interestingly there seems to be more media-studies literature focused on power in the
Liberal countries than in others. British or American media scholars, for example, are
much more likely to use Gramsci than Italians. Ironically one reason for this is that

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