ABSTRACT
In Latin America and in the field of communication, three thinkers have most clearly built their reflections around the category of mediation and have created a theoretical apparatus that stirs up new questions in the broad field of social communications. The first, Manuel Martín Serrano, founded the first department of theory of communication in Spain. The second thinker is Spanish-Colombian Jesús Martín-Barbero, who took discussion about mediations beyond the realms of technology and media and placed it in the rich worlds of popular cultures and regional traditional identities and into the modes of doing politics. Finally, Mexican Guillermo Orozco Gómez based research criteria on mediations to compel an epistemological reflection around the interactions and meanings created in the practice of media reception. This chapter briefly introduces the discussions around the different approaches to the concept of mediations and its Latin American uses in order to ultimately present some reflections as to why the theory of mediation continues to provide a standpoint from which to think communicationally about cultural and political transformation in Latin America.
