ABSTRACT
The interconnection between cultural history and media history is obvious: human cultural production in Western democratic societies has been relayed since the end of the 18th century by the media, which have become the main vehicle of culture, the main relays of concepts, ideals, myths, and collective representations. But the media are not solely vehicles, relays of culture; they also create something more. They create the space where high culture, popular culture, and specific cultures coexist and interrelate to produce a common culture. The history of mediations, which is still also a history of the production of meanings, appropriations, and misappropriations, comes under cultural history. Culture is often, not to say always, the result of a culmination of mediations, even if the recurrent questions of the role of the media exceed the cultural field.
