Ideas about human nature are forms of anthropological knowledge; they are woven from ideas about human characteristics that vary historically and culturally: about the body, the psyche, the social context, and transcendence - in other words, about the "nature" or "essence" of humanity. This interdisciplinary publication uses representative case studies to explore the particularities and evolution of ideas about human nature, as communicated by the media, and to draw conclusions about the fundamental relationship between mediality and ideas concerning what it is to be human.