Göran Bolin 304 vant, so at least downplayed. And the historical perspective longer, starting at the dawn of humanity, to the opposite of the Eu- ropean institutional and technological approaches that situates the mediatization process in the second half of the 20th century. Verón developed his approach to mediatization much earlier than the now dominant institutional approach as it has developed in Europe. Already in the 1980s he published his first texts on the topic (e.g. Verón, 1984), culminating in one of his last publications in Knut Lundby’s (2014) grand collection of media- tization researchers, where he represented a Latin American approach to the theory (Verón, 2014b). Naturally, Verón developed his thinking on the role of the media in society over the years, but his approach was always holistic and deeply historical. A specifically interesting approach to mediatization, or “hypermediatization”, is represented in the work of Argentinian scholar Mario Carlón. Carlón has in several publications emphasized the circulation of signs between different media technolo- gies, from niche media (or social media) to the mass media and back. There are several larger projects where this theory has been empirically tested, for example in the book Circulación del sentido y construcción de colectivos: En una sociedad hipermediatizada (Carlón 2020a). In his analysis, Carlón shows how the cir- culation of signs has become extended with the multiplication of new means for circulating signs in society, adding new layers to the “semiosis”, or the sphere of signs (see also Carlón 2020b, for an English language version of his argument). Carlón’s take on mediatization clearly exemplifies the ways in which the Latin American approach has always had a much clearer focus on textual expressions and meaning making compared to the European approaches, where the actual content of communication often is under-theorized. However, there are also correspondences between the Latin American and European traditions of media research, especially when it comes to its role in social and cultural processes. Verón’s position, for instance, has its counterpart among British cultural theorist Raymond Williams, who – in one of his lesserknown works, Communication (Williams, 1962/1966) – force- fully argues that communication always is an integrated part of social and cultural reality:
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