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. This connection cannot be further elaborated here. Our current, partial, task consists in clarifying what is involved when power is treated as a symbolically generalized communication medium, and when analyses of power are placed in the context of a theory of society.

DEFINE: Introduces the concept of symbolically generalized communication media, with power being the specific medium under analysis.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 583