Abstract
It was not until the emergence, in the 19th century, of new technical devices – such as the telegraph and the phonograph – that the term medius came to serve as a collective noun (media) for advanced communication technologies. Although mediation is extensively theorized in philosophy and sociology, and is approached by medium theory and media studies, the concept remains undertheorized in the field of communication theory.
By exploring the problem of mediation and by challenging its representationalist and transmissive accounts, this paper posits mediation beyond the medium. It traces mediation as a relational principle which can be best understood as modulation involving inherent translation, inflection and movement. Mediation is not a simple transportation of meaning through a passive intermediary. It is not just something which stands or comes between things otherwise separated or opposed. Mediation is neither a middle-thing linking separate entities, nor do things get mediated: They are already forms of mediation. Mediation is, foremost, a connecting mean that generates modified experiences and relations, a modulating process that re-connects at the moment it separates.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelseiten
- Editorial
- Editorial 2021
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- Beyond empowerment, experimentation and reasoning: The public discourse around the Quantified Self movement
- Being media literate about media policy, a bridge too far in Flanders/Belgium
- The democratic quality of political depictions in fictional TV entertainment. A comparative content analysis of the political drama Borgen and the journalistic magazine Berlin direkt
- In medias res – the mediation conundrum
- Like-minded and cross-cutting talk, network characteristics, and political participation online and offline: A panel study
- The differential effects of related and unrelated emotions on judgments about media messages
- Book reviews
- Waisbord, S. R. (2019). Communication: A post-discipline. Cambridge: Polity Press. 171 pp.
- Christians, C. (2019). Media ethics and global justice in the digital age. NY: Cambridge University Press. 428 pp.
- Paulmann, J. (Ed.) (2019). Humanitarianism & media: 1900 to the present. Oxford: Berghahn Books. 316 pp.
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelseiten
- Editorial
- Editorial 2021
- Articles
- “Not how much, but how.” Contextualizing the presentation of violence broadcast on television: Normativity and narrative genres
- Beyond empowerment, experimentation and reasoning: The public discourse around the Quantified Self movement
- Being media literate about media policy, a bridge too far in Flanders/Belgium
- The democratic quality of political depictions in fictional TV entertainment. A comparative content analysis of the political drama Borgen and the journalistic magazine Berlin direkt
- In medias res – the mediation conundrum
- Like-minded and cross-cutting talk, network characteristics, and political participation online and offline: A panel study
- The differential effects of related and unrelated emotions on judgments about media messages
- Book reviews
- Waisbord, S. R. (2019). Communication: A post-discipline. Cambridge: Polity Press. 171 pp.
- Christians, C. (2019). Media ethics and global justice in the digital age. NY: Cambridge University Press. 428 pp.
- Paulmann, J. (Ed.) (2019). Humanitarianism & media: 1900 to the present. Oxford: Berghahn Books. 316 pp.