Since the culture of modern media is a complicated phenomenon, mediation can best be studied by using a case study approach. This means focusing on a number of typical or otherwise interesting cases and then providing detailed analysis and theory.

Although the approach is based on a methodological pluralism, there are some semiotical notions that may be useful in the study. Thus music can be regarded as a semiotic phenomenon with senders and receivers, texts and metatexts, denotation and connotation, value judgements and ideologies.

What is also important is how people use mediated texts in their daily lives. As Fiske and Eco have stated, the products of popular and media culture are often "open" texts into which receivers and consumers project their own meanings and readings. This makes the ethnomusicological approach and interviews with informants also essential.