Page 306 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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TheFutureofthe ThreeModels

authority.Ouranalysisofhistoricaldevelopmentofthemediainthethree
groups of countries confirm these connections, though the differentia-
tion of media from political groups was also driven by economic factors,
whose role in Alexander’s theory, as we shall see, is more ambiguous and
problematic.
Alsoconsistentwithdifferentiationtheory,themediabecameincreas-
ingly central to political and much of social life, which according to dif-
ferentiation theory is a necessary outcome of the differentiation process.
As political parties, for example, become separated from churches, trade
unions, and other social groups – as well as from portions of the state
they may once have controlled (an increasingly professionalized judi-
ciary, for example) – they increasingly must depend on the media to
establish ties with individual voters and other social actors. In general, a
differentiated society relies on media to connect actors and institutions
no longer connected by more direct ties, according to differentiation
theory. These processes took place in all of the countries studied here,
but earliest in the Liberal and later in the Democratic Corporatist and
Polarized Pluralist systems.
At the same time, there are real problems with differentiation the-
ory and the concept of modernization connected with it as a way of
understanding media system change. In Chapter 4 we considered two
alternative perspectives to differentiation theory, associated with Haber-
mas and with Bourdieu, both of whom have argued that media history
can in some ways be seen as a process of de-differentiation. Our analysis
suggests that in important ways they are correct.

DIFFERENTIATION AND THE MARKET
One of the central arguments of Habermas and Bourdieu is that the me-
dia have lost autonomy in relation to the market and economic system.
And indeed, when we turn from the first of the two principal processes
of change discussed in this chapter – secularization – to the second –
commercialization – the modernization hypothesis of a unilinear shift
toward greater differentiation begins to seem increasingly simplistic. As
we saw in Chapter 2, Alexander (1981) argues that modernization of
the media requires that “there must be differentiation from structures in
the economic dimension, particularly social classes.” The main mean-
ing he gives to the differentiation of media from “economic structures”
has to do with ties of media to class-linked parties and organizations:
he argues that trade union–linked papers are historically a hindrance to

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