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Electronic Networks and Civil Society 69

ternet as an independent, separate type of medium, the effects of
which are emerging in other than mass-media related areas. Elec-
tronic networks will certainly change political public opinion, but in
ways that are supplementary to existing forms of public communi-
cation. In particular, we think that by virtue of its interactive com-
munication structure, the Internet may support the domain of public
communication, which has been described as “civil society” in the
context of theoretical discussion about modern democracy. The term
“civil society” refers to a network of pre-institutional civil activities
and assemblies as well as social movements and pressure groups
(compare Seligman 1992). These movements form an alternative
public sphere, which influences both political decisions and the pub-
lic opinion established by mass media system. In this way civil soci-
ety generates partial forms of public opinion which are relatively
open, close to the needs of citizens and which are characterized by
rather elaborate levels of discussion.

Media and the Public

Modern societies can be described as functionally differentiated soci-
eties (Luhmann 1997). Therefore one may say that meaningful struc-
tures, which are still connected to each other in premodern societies,
have been separated from each other and independent structures and
functional systems have emerged. The differentiation of society has,
however, not only improved its efficiency, but it has also generated
problems. The autonomy and closed character of the different func-
tional systems imply opacity between systems because of the high
inner complexity of each system; moreover, we observe that systems
ignore possible consequences of their own behavior regarding other
systems. As a result, modern societies are always confronted with
problems of integration, unification and self-description.
Here, the political system manifests some particularities (com-
pare Luhmann 1971). On the one hand, as an autonomous system, it
has the same characteristics and problems as any other functional
system. But on the other hand, the political system has to find meth-
ods of integrating different perspectives in order to guarantee the
consistency of a society. The political system has to cluster the dif-
ferent perspectives of the functional systems within a society to gen-
erate a transcontextual consensus. And, in modern democracies,
only the political system is seen as the legitimate system for formu-
lating general rules and frameworks for other systems of society.