Page 95 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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Media and Political Systems and Differentiation

among social bodies that specialize in particular functions. This idea
of Durkheim, that increased complexity of society requires functional
differentiation of social roles and institutions, is central to the evolution-
ist theory of Parsons. Parsons (1971: 26) defines differentiation as “the
division of a unit or structure of a social system into two or more units or
structures that differ in their characteristics and functional significance
for the system,” and describes a process of social change from primitive
to modern societies as one in which social functions initially fused are
separated: politics, for example, is differentiated from religion and from
economics.
There are at least three major points of Parsons’s thought that have
been applied by his followers to media analysis. First, Parsons points out
the importance of the evolutionary process: from an original unity of
functions, societies progress to a condition of specialization. Second, the
increased specialization of functions requires integrative mechanisms
to interconnect different subsystems, and communication systems are
identified as performing this integrative role. Third, differentiation in-
creasestheadaptiveabilitiesofeachsubsystem,andthereforeofthewhole
society. This evolutionist view, of course, implies the necessity and supe-
riority of modernity, and this is the focus of much criticism of Parsons
and of structural-functionalism as conservative and ethnocentric, as an
apology, essentially, for the existing social order.
Another influential version of differentiation theory is that of
Niklas Luhmann. Luhmann’s version is more strictly functionalist than
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Parsons’s evolutionary view, and one might say more cynical. Luhmann
claims that the difference between social knowledge produced by a spe-
cialized mass media system and that produced by “sages, priests, the
nobility, the city, by religion or by politically and ethically distinguished
ways of life...isso stark that one can speak neither of decline nor of
progress” (2000: 85). In this sense he differentiates his view from Parsons
by disavowing a claim that modernity is superior. In many other ways,
however, his views are quite similar.
Public opinion, Luhmann argues in a well-known paper bearing that
title, must be conceived functionally as a means to select themes around
which public discussion will be focused. These themes are understood
to be sets of meanings about which “one can discuss, have the same or

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Cynical, in the sense that Luhmann rejects any notion of enlightened public opinion;
the media, in Luhmann’s view provide not enlightenment (even as an ideal goal) but
“irritation.”

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