Mediation
the mediation of press and TV; our perceptions
of events are coloured by the perceptions, preoc-
cupations, values, of the mediators.
However, the construct of events is far from
a monopoly of the mass media; it is further
mediated, and the process modifi ed or altered
altogether, by those around us who exert infl u-
ence – friends, relatives, work colleagues, etc.- and other so-called intervening variables
(ivs) such as personal mood, time of day or state
of health.
The term takes on fresh dimensions and
direction when applied to network communica-
tion (see new media; networking: social
networking). In the digital age mediation is
characterized by the participation and interac-
tion of network users; patterns of mediation are
more horizontal than vertical, more a process
of exchange in which users become their own
message-makers and mediators; thus the
scenario is more fragmented, individualized and
in a perpetual state of fl ux.
In Alternative and Activist New Media (Polity
Press, 2011), Leah A. Lievrouw writes that
‘mediation is comprised of two interrelated
modes of communicative action that contrast
with the production-consumption dynamics and
linear “eff ects” or feedback models of associated
with mass media’.
Reconfi guration describes how users ‘modify
and adapt media technologies and systems
as needed to suit their various purposes or
interests’. Remediation (a term originated by
Jay Bolter and Robert Grusin in Remediation:
Understanding New Media, MIT Press, 1999)
occurs when ‘content, forms and structures of
communication relationships’ are mediated by
users when they ‘borrow, adapt or remix existing
materials, expressions, and interactions to create
a continually expanding universe of innovative
new works and ideas’. Lievrouw cites these as
‘hallmarks of contemporary communication
processes, creative work and media culture’.
Reconfi guration and remediation ‘allow people
to work around the fi xity of traditional media
technologies and institutional systems, and to
negotiate, manipulate, and blur the boundar-
ies between impersonal interaction and mass
communication’. See audience: active audi-
ence; blogosphere; open source; s-iv-r
model of communication; web 2.0.
▶Neil Washbourne, Mediating Politics: Newspaper,
Radio, Television and the Internet (Open University,
2007); Philip M. Napoli, Audience Evolution: New
Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audi-
ences (Columbia University Press, 2011).
research, the 1940s and 1950s, attention centred
almost exclusively on the communicators, and
there was the assumption that what was trans-
mitted was simply received. With the advent of
uses and gratifications theory the audi-
ence became important and it became plain that
audiences put media to many uses, not always
the ones intended by the communicators.
At around the same time, in the 1960s and
1970s, textual analysis came into its own (see
denotation, codes, connotation, signs).
Deconstruction of texts became a key activity.
Eventually interest turned to deconstructing the
audience itself, using research methods such as
those pioneered in ethnography (see ethno-
graphic approach to audience measure-
ment). Today there is general agreement that to
focus on one area of study to the neglect of others
is to produce skewed results, and the validity and
reliability of theory suff ers. Ultimately, however,
the purpose of theory can be summed up in one
phrase – the search for meaning. See topic
guide under communication theory.
▶Stephen W. Littlejohn, Theories of Human
Communication (Wadsworth, 7th edition, 2002);
Em Griffi n, A First Look at Communication Th eory
(McGraw-Hill, 5th edition, 2003); Steve Duck and
David T. McMahon, Th e Basics of Communication: A
Relational Perspective (Sage, 2008); Denis McQuail,
McQuail’s Mass Communication Th eory (Sage, 6th
edition, 2010).
Mediation Between an event and the reporting
or broadcasting of it to an audience, mediation
occurs, that is a process of interpretation – shap-
ing, selecting, editing, emphasizing, de-empha-
sizing – according to the perceptions, expecta-
tions and previous experience of those involved
in the reporting of the event; and in accordance
with the requirements and characteristics of
the means of reporting. Between the event of
a car accident or a murder and the report of
such an event a whole series of inter-mediating
actions takes place. Th e event is translated into
words or pictures; it is processed according to
the demands of the medium – for headlines,
for good pictures – and pressures such as time,
space and contending messages.
Even when, in interpersonal communi-
cation, person A communicates a message
to person B which B conveys to person C, a
process of mediation inevitably takes place:
B may rephrase the message, give parts of it
prominence and understate other parts, supple-
ment or distort the information. Mediation is
inescapable: much of our knowledge of life and
the world comes to us at second hand, through