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

Polarization as a structure of intolerance (a communicational issue) 287 In the work of differences, communication is not the space for consensus: rather, it is the scope for recognition of dif- ferences and work of sharing in search of their efficient articula - tion. Politics manifests not only as a relation of forces but also, and above all, as a space for negotiating differences. To realize, in this space, how the interactional logics are established is to perform a communicational study. Communicational issues refer, then, to the problem of articulating different symbolic orders, different processes, po- sitions, preferences - and even personal idiosyncrasies. All ele- ments - participants, contexts, urgencies, and strategies - focus on ongoing or sought interactions. The work of human communication is not to erase dif- ferences, which would be constitutively impossible, but to make articulations between them feasible, seeking that the strains resulting from diversity are productive or overcome, avoiding the generation of disruptions, and reducing the likelihood of violence and oppression. It is communication that reduces the relativism of things, producing meanings. Studying research reports in the field of communica- tion, especially within the scope of COMPÓS 3 , as well as through empirical observations in my research group (BRAGA et al., 2017), we discern, through a whole diversity of processes, two basic aspects in the occurrence of interaction - which we charac- terize as “codes” and “inferences.” The meaning of the word “code”, in the concept of “in- teractional codes”, is markedly distinct from that of the same term in the mathematical information theory. In the informa- tional theory, it corresponds to the process of transposing some- thing (thought, idea, proposal, information) into a message, in such a way that the reversion of that same code, at the arrival point, recovers that something, identical to the one at the point of departure; therefore, a purely transmissive process. In the expression “interactional codes”, in contrast, what we have are pre-shared or sharing elements , in the spaces of a common culture, of an experience already given, at the mo- ment of the episode, between the participants, with the support 3 National Association of Graduate Programs in Communication.