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

Epistemology of communication, neomaterialism, and digital culture 87 Neomaterialism means a set of assumptions that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, from different authors and schools: theory of materialities of Germanic origin (GUM- BRECHT; PFEIFFER, 1994; KITTLER, 1999), monadological so- ciologies (BENSUSAN; FREITAS, 2018 ), like the Actor-network Theory (LAW, 1992; LATOUR, 2005, 2015; CALLON, 2006); ob- ject-oriented philosophies and agency (DE LANDA, 2006; VER- BEEK, 2005; HARMAN, 2011; BENNETT, 2010), post-humanism, feminism, and gender studies (HARAWAY, 1987; BARAD, 2007; BRAIDOTTI, 2013), among others. Concerning the current digital culture, stand out the work of Pink et al. (2016), Lupton (2016), and Dourish (2016, 2017). Neomaterialism inherits arguments developed in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, such as those of radical empiricism (HUME, 2003, JAMES, 1912), modes of ex- istence (SOURIAU, 2009), agenc y (DELEUZE; GUATTARI, 1995), collectives/association/monadology (LEIBNIZ, 2004; TARDE, 2007), material semiology (FOUCAULT, 2000), and realism (WHITEHEAD, 1978). From syntheses carried out by some authors (BEN- NETT; JOYCE, 2010; BENNETT, 2010; MILLER, 2005; FOX; ALL- DRED; 2017; THRIFT, 2005; GAMBLE; HANAN; NAIL, 2019), we can say that neomaterialist theories start from four central perspectives: materialism, pragmatism, non-anthropocentrism, and associativism. Materialism means that every phenomenon develops in networks, producing effects or material concerns. The non-essentialist/pragmatic view holds that the object (hu- man and non-human) is what it does and cannot be defined by a substance or a priori categories. The non-anthropocentric posi- tion states that the agency gets distributed in the network/agen- cy and control and source of action are not the privileges of the human actor. Everything happens in a localized or locally con- nected association. The associative/local approach states that everything happens in a flat network, and the analysis of con- troversies should not start from ad hoc explanations. Material processes and agency flows are valued in experiences in which social issues are always the result of human and non-human 5 collectives. It starts with a flat ontology, always seeking to es - 5 For a critique of the neomaterialist perspective, see Rekret (2018).