From (new) media to (hyper) mediations Recovering Jesús Martín-Barbero's mediation theory in the age of digital communication and cultural convergence

Abstract

Jesús Martín-Barbero is considered one of the main references of Latin American media and cultural studies. This article recovers his works and proposes an update of his contributions within the context of the contemporary media ecology. After describing the conversations that characterized the Latin American academic circuit in the early 1980s, the article introduces Martín-Barbero's theory of mediation, taking as a reference his influential book De los Medios a las Mediaciones (1987). The article then explores two paths: a contemporary reading of Martín-Barbero's contributions from a digital perspective and a comparison between Martín-Barbero's mediation and Henry Jenkins' convergence culture.