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

Individuals, collectives, and polarization in the unstable situation caused by mediatization and... 243 […] se multiplican las investigaciones sobre recep- ción, y se comienza a comprobar que los indivi- duos que habitan el meta-espacio social son me- nos lisos, pasivos, manipulables e influenciables de lo que se había imaginado (ibid., p. 137). As he points out towards the end of the chapter, “of the factors operating in the social meta-space, individualism is un- doubtedly the main responsible for the acceleration of the diver- gence” (ibid., p. 138). In his opinion, the The media have not invented the individualism of modernity, but they have exacerbated it to the extreme and have consequently contributed to ac- centuating the fragmentation and growing com- plexity of consumers (ibid., p. 136). 2. Continuities and ruptures between postmodernity and contemporaneity It is possible to assure that, inhis laterwork, EliseoVerón did not regret what he had written, but, on the contrary, contin- ued his story. A clear example of what we are saying is his thesis on the “end” of television. For Verón, the divergence between pro- duction and recognition did not stop growing and, finally, caused the crisis of mass television. As he expresses in the last section of “The end of the history of a piece of furniture” (2009), It is necessary to cover the whole process of me- diatization, old media, and new technologies to understand the current situation: on the offer side, we are witnessing an unprecedented technological integration. Until a decade ago, three major indus- tries - telecommunications, computing, and pub- lic television - had separate histories […] Thanks to the Internet Protocol, the three sectors today converge technologically and commercially […] This process is ending the third (and last) stage of ‘general public’ television as we knew because the traditional audiovisual sector is the most affected in its business structure. But we must understand