This collection assembles articles pursuing a programmatic combination of approaches from media studies and cultural studies. A critical discussion of rival approaches based on a purely technological perspective is used to fathom the potential available for a cultural slant on media analysis. This discussion involves the development of (a) concepts of 'cultural concretion' (ethnology), (b) ideas on a fundamental theory of transcriptiveness avoiding the pitfalls of mentalism (brain, language), (c) models for analyzing intermediality, (d) scenarios of 'media-technological superiority', (e) a 'rhetoric of novelty' in the history of the media, and (f) ideas on the significance of media discourse in the self-description of modern societies.