The second section takes stock of the current 'state of the art' of practice-focused research on citizen and activist media and develops a critical assessment of how the concept of media practices has been used in recent literature, identifying key strengths and shortcomings. Hence, we ground the roots of the practice approach in Latin American communication and media studies, we scrutinize Couldry's conceptualization in connection to theories of practices within the social sciences, and we examine audience research, media anthropology, social movement studies, citizen and alternative media, and Communication for Development and Social Change.

The first section provides an extensive overview of the different currents in research on media practices, identifying the antecedents of the media practice approach in several theoretical traditions and highlighting possible points of convergence between them.

This chapter explores the past, assesses the present and delineates the future of a media practice approach to citizen media.

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