The Theory of Mediations examines how media become meaningful through culture, history, institutions, technical forms, and everyday social practice. Martín-Barbero’s changing maps guide investigation beyond channel metrics while requiring explicit boundaries and evidence, without treating audiences as free of power or assigning universal causal weights to contextual categories.
- FamilyModel
- CategoryParadigms, Traditions & Metatheories
- DomainMedia, Publics & Society
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Paradigms, Traditions & Metatheories
Provides a broad intellectual perspective within which multiple concepts, theories or investigations are developed. Traditions carry histories and commitments; metatheories examine how theories themselves are organized or related.