This essay seeks to begin to recover the multiplicity of media participation by focusing on its remaking during the spread and consolidation of a capitalist economy in early modern England. It develops a distinction between unidimensional and multidimensional conceptions of media participation, and uses this to identify and explore the implications of specific cultural forms and media practices which refashioned media participation from medieval into modern forms. The essay concludes by arguing that current critical/radical efforts to challenge dominant media practice must confront the entire complex of forms and practices that enable and support modernist conceptions and practices of media participation.