Social evolution drives differentiation, which in turn generates more generalized communication media.

Evidence

Above all, in this type of analysis at the societal level, we can go beyond the mere designation of power as expression or dependent variable of the social fact, ‘society’, and make use of the fact that recent social theory works with three different but compatible concepts, namely: (1) a theory of system formation and system differentiation; (2) a theory of evolution; and (3) an as yet emerging theory of symbolically generalized communication media. The objects of these theories must be seen as interdependent at the societal level of system formation, in the sense that social evolution leads to larger, more complex and more strongly differentiated social systems. In order to bridge a greater degree of differentiation, these systems develop more highly generalized and, at the same time, more highly specialized communication media, which are assigned to societally more significant subsystems. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 583

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out the core theoretical architecture — system differentiation, evolution, and symbolically generalized media as three interdependent concepts.
• XREF: connects to: Data’s core function is differentiation, which compounds existing social discrimination. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 125