Hermeneutics for an anti-hermeneutic age: What the legacy of Jesús Martín-Barbero means today

Abstract

This article, after discussing the obstacles to the initial reception of Martín-Barbero’s work on mediation in Europe, analyses its importance to contemporary media research in terms of three factors: mediation, inequality and complexity. Far from being less relevant today, those insights, and Martín-Barbero’s overall insistence on a hermeneutic approach to understanding culture are of huge relevant today in an age when the automation of cultural production and data extraction is characterized by an anti-hermeneutic drive.