Information mediations: Socio-historical meanings

Abstract

The term mediation is presented in the field of information studies as an important category that guides the different issues related to the production, access, consumption, appropriation and organization of information. Considering the relevance in which the term acquired in Information Science and the polysemy that marks its use, the article aims ate presenting reflections derived from postdoctoral research that sought, among other objectives, to explore the historical and philosophical genesis of the term, as well as point out perspectives of its use in the construction and apprehension of info-communicational objects in contemporary times. To this end, it investigates the roots of the concept in dialectics (G.W.F. Hegel; K. Marx) and its reformulation through the construct "social mediation" in the communicational field (M. Martín Serrano). Finally, we consider French lineage approaches of Information and Communication Sciences (Y. Jeanneret; J. Davallon) on the economics of writing on the web, focusing on micro-documentary forms. These different approaches are complementary in a way that they encompass different levels of information mediation-macro and micro social, theoretical-conceptual and empirical-applied, documentary and procedural-in their multiple and relational determinations.