How to Define Media in a Mediatized Society? A Media Pedagogical Proposal Inspired by Theoretical Ideas of ­Castells, Luhmann and Peirce

Abstract

Learning processes of children, adolescents and adults do not only take place in formal contexts like school, but also in informal contexts, such as in the family or in one’s peer group, or in non-formal social contexts like clubs. In many of these learning processes media play a significant role – as an instrument and as a subject for learning. Therefore it is an important task for media education to describe and analyze such processes and to formulate pedagogical consequences for learning with and about media. To realize this challenge, it is helpful and necessary to develop a definition of media which is adequate for learning in different contexts of a mediatized society. We discuss three theoretical approaches: a network perspective, systems theory and semiotics to help us to create an appropriate definition of media offers. We use an everyday life example (communication with and via Facebook) to illustrate our argument.