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

Pedro Gilberto Gomes 76 ing about reality) and real-life issues and its transformation (learning in and from reality) 4 . It is not a matter of working with them in parallel, but of bringing the themes’ perspective to the contents and methodology of the area. 2. Transversality and mediatization Transversality differs from interdisciplinarity because, although both reject the conception of knowledge that takes reality as a set of stable data, the first refers to the didactic di - mension and the second to the epistemological approach to knowledge objects. That is: if interdisciplinarity questions the compartmentalized view of the reality on which the school was constituted - but still works considering the disciplines -, the transversality concerns the understanding of the different ob- jects of knowledge, making possible the reference to the systems built in the students’ reality. In this sense, the real intention of transversal themes is to rescue people’s dignity, equal rights, participation in society, and co-responsibility for social life. 3. Mediatization and transversal themes Within the framework of transversal themes, we ques- tioned, or rather, inquiredabout thosewho arepart of the systemic complexity of the reflection on communication. What are, in a so- ciety in mediatization, the themes that run transversally through studies and approaches in terms of society in mediatization? We can say that the search for transversality is a way of organizing research on mediatization, where some themes are integrated into the analysis of media processes present in all of them. Analyzing the work of some of the thinkers on the theme, we identified some topics that, beyond the content, are present, transversally, in all studies. 3.1. Circulation In this context, the concept of circulation gains impor- tance and transcendence. When advancing on the issue of cir- 4 Today we talk about learning to learn, learning to unlearn, and learning to relearn.