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

263 Among Media: The place of mediatization Lucrécia D´Alessio Ferrara 1 Abstract: Considering the informative environments where dif- ferent communicative processes are organized, this work pro- poses to study the differences established between technical media and mediatization, seeking to achieve matrices (between fixed and flows in polarization) that write another epistemology of communication. Plural mediatization processes are affected by the connections between media, but they redefine their di - mensions as they are affected by new informational means; they are not determined by them but operate as a critical action pow- er that can have, in expectation, the revision of a previous po- larized epistemology to give rise to more critic and consequent communication. Keywords: Communication. Information. Epistemology. Mediatization. “On the telephone or on the air, it isn´t messages that travel at electric speed: the sender is sent, minus a body, as information and image, and all the old rela - tionships of speaker and audience tend to be reversed. The laws of media in tetrad form reveal some of the subliminal and previously inaccessible aspects of technology. To the extend that these observations re- veal the hidden effects of artefacts on our lives, they are endeavours of art, bridging the worlds of biology and technology” (MCLUHAN, 1988, p. 109) 1 Full Pr ofessor at the Universidade Católica de Sã o Paul o and CNPq Researcher . ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4727-9817. Email: ldferrara@hotmail.com