Page 94 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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Concepts and Models

DIFFERENTIATION AND DE-DIFFERENTIATION
At a very general level we could summarize the differences among these
systems by saying that in the Liberal countries the media are closer to
the world of business, and further from the world of politics. In the
Polarized Pluralist systems they are relatively strongly integrated into
the political world, while in Democratic Corporatist countries the me-
dia have had strong connections to both the political and economic
worlds, though with a significant shift away from political connections
particularly in recent years. As we shall see in detail in Chapter 8, there
is a trend in all countries toward commercialization of the media and
professionalization of journalism and other media-related occupations,
and a corresponding separation of the ties that once connected the media
to the world of politics – most particularly to political parties and other
organized social groups. There is, in this sense, a convergence toward the
Liberal Model.
One theoretical perspective that is of obvious relevance to the anal-
ysis of this pattern of differences among systems and their subsequent
convergence is the tradition of differentiation theory, originating with
Durkheim and passing through the systems theory of Talcott Parsons.
Differentiation theory is not very often employed explicitly in contem-
porary media studies. It was, however, in an earlier era: Much of the
of the work on comparative media systems in the 1960s was tied to
the “modernization” framework that had close connections to differ-
entiation theory (e.g., Pye 1963). Many assumptions drawn from dif-
ferentiation theory are embedded in the conventional wisdom about
media systems, particularly in the view that the Liberal Model is the
most “modern,” and that convergence toward that model is to be under-
stoodas“modernization.”Inthissectionweelaboratetheassumptionsof
differentiation theory more explicitly, contrast it with alternative frame-
works for understanding media systems and media system change at
the macrosociological level, and position our own analysis in relation to
these perspectives. In Chapter 8, where we discuss convergence of media
systems, we will return to this discussion to draw further conclusions
about the applicability of differentiation theory to the study of media
systems.
THE PERSPECTIVE OF DIFFERENTIATION THEORY. Durkheim, in The Divi-
sion of Labor in Society (1893), spoke of the separation of professions
as a kind of horizontal differentiation of society: Modern societies,
he argued, become increasingly complex as functions are divided

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