Institution, Technology, World : Relationships between the Media, Culture and Society

In this chapter three approaches to mediatization are discussed: the institutional, the technological, and the media as world. Each of these has a different ontological and epistemological background, and it is argued that this has consequences on which questions are posed, and which kinds of answers are possible to give. For these backgrounds it is accounted, with a special focus on how these approaches theorize the relationship between media and society, how media are defined and which historical perspective is privileged.