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

José Luiz Braga 294 the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class , a class suffering from an economic cri - sis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. (ECO, 1995, 6 th characteristic) Intolerance becomes the project of action, articulating the participants in this field, with the aim of silencing, removing, or destroying the other. 4. The mediatization of intolerance I do not intend to attribute the current social polariza- tion to the processes of mediatization. Directly political and eco- nomic issues play a major role here. However, such polarization develops in the context of the ongoing mediatization – and, thus, takes on the profile demarcated by this circumstance. Mediatiza- tion, as an interactive reference process (BRAGA, 2007), affects the polarizing structure in different ways. We will address here only three of these modes of inci- dence - enough to highlight their relevance. Two correspond to the direct effects of mediatization on social processes. The other derives from a complex political drive for affordances 5 of digital technologies at the service of polarizing attitudes. 4.1 First Angle In the 20th century, radio and TV directed us towards centralized discourses. At the turn of the 21st century - as part of the strategies to face the problem of this centralized voice, proposing access to diverse voices - technologies ended up mak- ing a “centralized voice” available to each organized group, with interactional conditions to become the center of the world itself. The technological functionalities favor the meeting of partici- pants around a focus of opinions and attitudes. This singular fo- 5 Gibson’s concept relates characteristics of the environment to the perspectives of the species that trigger it. Correa Gomes et al. (2018, p. 59) observe that “the agents of an environment perceive what a niche offers, interpret affordances, and act on them”. I use the term “viability” with this meaning - an expression that I will use in this text as an adequate translation of the term affordances.