La mediación social y los enfoques de la teoría de la comunicación

Abstract

The publication of La Mediación Social in 1977 meant a stimulant break with the dominant academic thought and practice on communication of that period. It broke with some trends that interpreted in a fragmented way and without a coherent theory the new discourses of the mass society, by proposing the theory of communication as a new paradigm for other sciences, not only for the social sciences. The theory of the social mediation linked communication to the sciences of life and to society. In 1977, the concept of mediation was an absolute innovation with regards to its reference to communication / information, but even more, to the processes of social mediation. Mediation, interpreted as society’s and nature’s common factor, goes beyond the mass media, and interprets culture by placing it between the natural and the artificial worlds. Thirty years later, we can see how La Mediación Social anticipated in many ways the current debate on the society of the information, its definition and its cultural and social interpretation. Manuel Martín Serrano's book was also an important testimony of how could/should the university studies on communication be like: They should teach how to communicate, but also, and especially, teach how to think about communication.