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

85 Epistemology of communication, neomaterialism, and digital culture 1 André Lemos 2 Abstract: This paper aims to present neomaterialist theories, aiming at their application in the social communication domain. The concept of mediation is proposed as central to understand the communicative process, taking seriously the agency of ob- jects and their materiality. The article starts from the hypothesis that the majority of communication studies values anthropo- centric perspectives, intersubjective, contextual, and transcen- dent relations. This posture would not be able to encompass all the complexity of communicational phenomena in general and those of digital culture in particular. The article presents a meth- odological proposal for a neomaterialistic analysis of infocom- municational objects. Keywords: Materiality. Mediation. Social communication. Cyberculture. 1. Introduction This article points out the main characteristics of neo - materialist currents and proposes a methodology for analyzing processes, products, and objects from digi - tal culture 3 . In the first part, we present these theories’ 1 Article originally published in Galaxy, São Paulo, n. 43, Jan./Apr. 2020. Mar. 20, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-25532020143970 2 Full professor and researcher CNPq – Universidade Federal da Bahia. Salvador, Brazil. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9291-6494. Email: almlemos@ gmail.com 3 This article is part of the Communication, Mediation, and Cyberculture research (PQ-1A CNPq). These ideas were presented at the III International Seminar on Mediatization and Social Processes at UNISINOS, São Leopoldo - RS, in May 2019. I owe a lot to the discussions inside Lab404 ( http://lab404.ufba.br ).