Together with Maria Löblich (FU Berlin), we wrote a chapter for the theorizing governance section in the Handbook of Media and Communication Governance. The handbook was edited by Manuel Puppis, Robin Mansell and Hilde Van den Bulck and brings together some of the centre lines of media and communication governance studies. The goal of our chapter is to introduce and discuss discursive institutionalism (DI) and to present discursive media institutionalism (DMI) as a theoretical approach to study media and communication governance. Political scientist Vivien A. Schmidt’s approach has gained considerable attention in media and communication studies, particularly among scholars studying media institutions. Discursive institutionalism emphasizes the importance of ideas and discourses in institutional processes and provides a dynamic perspective on institutions (Schmidt, 2010, 2011). DI makes it possible to consider how and why media institutions are constructed, reproduced or changed by actors, how power operates in their discourses and what the specific contexts of institutional change are.