José Luiz Braga 50 5. Mediatization We are now in a historical period of acceleration of technological inventions. The correlating social invention must proliferate as well. The current period of communication experimentation, circuit review, and learning through invention has lasted more than a century – with intensification in the three most recent decades. Even in the first half of the 20th century, human soci- ety began to worry about the incidence of technological means of communication – since the use of radio and cinema in Nazi propaganda. Adorno’s critical theory gave a reflexive and sys- tematized form to the general concern with the manipulative potential of the culture industry. We also learned that reception activates cultural mediation. Currently, since the end of the 20th century, the concern has shifted from the industry to the direct activation of media technologies from individual or sectoral scopes, generating other orders of urgency, which compound with the previous ones. Social and academic concerns are legitimate, given that we effectively verify the occurrence of technological crossings – both in terms of undemocratic gestures in the relationship of differences and the generation of polarization. We also make stimulating and productive experiences. Nevertheless, the most relevant communicational element of this situation does not correspond to the functionalities of the media or the imposition of their particular logics on society. Media functionalities and logics are relevant and require studies, research, and systemati- zation. Research areas within the scope of Communication that study these elements have offered important contributions to the discipline. However, it would be simplistic to attribute ef- fects, harmful or positive, exclusively to technologies, in a causal or deterministic relationship. The first offerings of the technologies are composed of the tactics and interactional strategies that human societies had developed until the previous period. Each new technique or technology offers (in its initial phase of entry into social
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