Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Circulation and transformations of journalistic discourses 101 worked, announcing that “I am the one who reports my treat- ment” (FAUSTO NETO, 2011b). Changes in circulation generate a crisis in other rou- tines in the journalistic environment. The ombudsman, until then considered a central character in the construction of a me- diating protocol between newspaper and readers, departs from his role in the face of the newspaper’s resistance to open the col- umn for interaction in real-time, via the internet, with its read- ers (FAUSTO NETO, 2008b). It is a typical situation in which the journalistic organization fears injunctions of economy and the digital logics, whose actions and strategies could remove from the journalistic practices the core of its central activity: to weave the process of news according to its logic and operations. The effects of the complex feedbacks produced by me- diatization affect the socio-communication environment. It is no longer an issue of the “era of the media” and its representational practices, enunciating meanings according to logics permeated by tentatively regulatory expectations, but rather new enuncia- tive assemblages that take place through discursive processes that deal with then another scenario of circulation, the different (media and non-media) practices. The effects of this new environment manifest in vari- ous stages of the mediating activity of journalism, and this field sees its configuration progressively being crossed by circuits of operations, many of which are already handled by different in- stitutions and actors. Illustrating the existence of a niche that shapes a new enunciative activity, we highlight the role of large digital com- panies that operate according to interaction schemes in which media institutions and social actors become components of in- teractional practices organized by them, according to other cir- culation procedures. In this new ambiance, newspapers and readers be- come customers of macro institutions, particularly of their com- municative matrices (such as Facebook) as large companies that generate interactional processes through “contact zones” that would transform the media-informational architecture and, punctually, the activity of message circulation. They are also projects that generate interactional processes involved in inter -