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

Individuals, collectives, and polarization in the unstable situation caused by mediatization and... 257 in.” Of what? Of their own social and media identity that is also located in multiple groups and institutions with which they have different bonds. Example 1, the individual and the family: every time an information about the family to which they belong is made public either because it is published by their children, parents, or by themselves, that is to say, “outside,” one way or an- other they are or may be affected. Example 2, the individual and the university: every time a ranking is published on the position that their institution of belonging occupies, it affects, for better or worse, “inside” and “outside,” the prestige of its members. With which we finally arrive at the question that mo - tivates us, which is the following: in this complex process of ac- celeration of the divergence that characterizes our contempora- neity in which individuals play such an important role, what is their participation in each pole that, we can hypothesize, relies on processes of “convergence 21 ?” We hypothesize that, besides, the success of the polarization is due to the power of the “media” (thanks to phenomena such as algorithms, as Calvo explains) to which each pole provides, at some level, responses, to individu- als and groups, to the increase in complexity and instability that characterize the multiple situations in which they are located. According to this argument, after the institutions, the media (as institutions), the parties, and the brands entered into crisis, a product of individualism and divergence, the new conditions of circulation of meaning generate even greater instability for indi- viduals . And it is at this point that with polarization, which con- tains and gives answers, they find their complementarity. References BAUMAN, Zygmunt. Modernidad líquida. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2003 [2000]. BECK, Ulrich. Vivir nuestra propia vida en un mundo desbocado: individuación, globalización y política. In: En el límite: la 21 We say convergence following the use that Verón makes of the pair conver- gence/divergence in “Conversación Sobre el Futuro” (VERÓN, 2001). But it must be clear that, from our point of view, based on circulation, the poles sub- sist while supporting “inside” the “divergence”: the difference that allows each individual to feel a constitutive part of them without losing their individuality.