Mediatization, polarization, and intolerance (between environments, media, and circulation)

Surveillance of the watchmen: analytics of mediatization and newsworthiness 163 zation research deals with the complex relationship between changes in the media and communication and changes in vari- ous fields of culture and society. Their proposition is that media- tization as an emerging concept can be conceived as belonging to a paradigmatic change in media and communication research. Mediatization puts in check the double condition point- ed out by Hjarvard (2012, p. 68): “[...] it intervenes in human in- teraction in many different contexts, while it also institutionaliz- es the media as an autonomous entity with its own logic.” In the Brazilian case, it is possible to sustain that the semi-autonomy intended by the community of journalism researchers needs to face what I call the communicational crisis of journalistic media- tion. Thus, when Swedish and Scandinavian researchers refer to the media, they seek to focus journalistic activity within media processes. When I point out the crisis of journalistic mediation, I try to point out the passage from a “media-centric” perspec- tive (endowed with groups or parts around the same center) to the emergence of a “media-centered” conception (HEPP; HJAR- VARD; LUNDBY, 2015). Obviously, these notes are typical of a pre-diffusion period of the leak phenomena: WikiLeaks and, es- pecially, The Intercept Brazil. Hjarvard’s (2012) mention of the independent condi- tion cultivated by the media in a certain historical period and contexts requires consideration. In Brazil, the prevalence of media oligopolies has defined the structuring of activity in mul - timedia groups since the emergence of companies and which, with digital convergence, had their action intensified by the edi - torial bias specific to each group, bringing together the previous editorial action of newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV sta- tions. Therefore, it was not the digital convergence that brought challenges to the news activity. In the Brazilian case, it was be- fore the proliferation of digital social networks and new busi- ness models (if they can be called memes and fake news produc- ers) that deepened the questioning of journalistic mediation in audiences tired of hierarchical positions of political life and, es- pecially, social, and religious, in a diverse and fragmented Brazil. Thus, I want to point out that the news built by the media oligopolies, together with their hierarchical action on re- gional groups and local irradiation companies, is especially con-