Page 96 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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Concepts and Models

different opinions” (Luhmann 1978: 94). In this sense Luhmann argues
that public opinion in the more traditional sense of a common opinion
“may not exist.” At the level of microgroups, themes allow dialogue
between different partners and, in a wider systemic perspective, organize
and make public discussion possible. For Luhmann a theme of opinion
must have certain characteristics: it has to be general, so as to simplify
publicdiscussionwithoutbreakingitupintoseveralcontrastingstreams.
There should also be a precise distinction between theme (information
about a certain topic) and opinion (judgment and evaluation of the
same topic). If the two are not kept apart, a proper discussion between
thepartnerswillnotbepossible:theywillnotbeabletoconductdialogue
on an equal level and will be subject to manipulation.
Luhmann places great emphasis on what he calls (2000: 37) the “self-
referential character” of the process of public communication and ar-
gues that the media “are autonomous in the regulation of their own
selectivity” (2000: 23–4). The generation of communication themes has
aspecific place in the functional distribution of tasks among the various
social subsystems. Luhmann makes a distinction, in particular, between
attention rules and decision rules, the former belonging to the field of
communication, the latter to political institutions. Through the mass
media, communication themes are brought to attention, analyzed, and
proposed to the political system. It is the function of public opinion, or-
ganized by the media system, to draw attention to important problems,
but government and more broadly the political system has the responsi-
bility to make decisions about those problems – the media and the public
discuss but do not decide. The organization of public discussion around
themes simplifies social complexity, which would otherwise be unman-
ageable. To perform this function the means of communication need
to be independent from other systems, particularly from the political
system for which they develop a thematic agenda.
Another, more explicitly comparative statement on the media from
the perspective of differentiation theory is that of Alexander (1981). For
Alexander, a society is considered “modern” if its journalistic informa-
tion system is autonomous from other social systems:

In a modernizing and differentiating society, the media are a func-
tional substitute for concrete group contact, for the now impossible
meeting of the whole. Indeed...media emerge only with social
differentiation itself, and the more “modern” a society is the more
important its media....The very possibility of a flexible normative

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