Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Antonio Fausto Neto 104 breakdown, as the dynamics of the demonstrations would not be captured by the reporting methodologies that covered the marches: “We have to change the mirror,” shouts an editor to a reporter, present on the streets, accusing the gap between what was happening on the streets, and the journalistic attempts de - signed to cover them” (FAUSTO NETO, 2013b). Illustrating the outbreaks between the logics of the protesters and those of the media coverage, said a reporter, reflecting on the performance of the media in the face of the demonstrations: “They tied a knot in the head of journalists” (FAUSTO NETO, 2013b). The dissolutions of mediations take place in events such as street demonstrations, but also in the sphere of journalistic or - ganizations themselves. News reports the disappearance of the ombudsman in the editorial-redactional architecture of the New York Times. It is one of the most emblematic records to symbolize the profound changes that journalism is going through, especially in its economy of circulation . It is not just a matter of removing a journalist from his/her job but of the extinction of one of the levels of the observation process that the newspaper made use of to constitute a binding protocol with the readers. By remov- ing the mediator, the journalistic institution would be giving up a central link, replacing structures that would try to dissolve forms that would enable the reader to have a qualitative contact with the newspaper. By ending the role of ombudsman, the newspaper plans to inaugurate other forms of (working) relations with the reader, such as expanding its comment platform, so that readers start acting as editors. As a justification, the newspaper would claim that “such a fundamental relationship could not be out- sourced to a single intermediary, said the NYT editor, in a state- ment to the newsroom” (Meio e Mensagem, 06/01/2017). IV – Couplings, interpenetrations, bifurcations, discontinuities At the end of the second decade of this century, three facts are woven into the Brazilian journalistic context, calling attention to changes in the conditions of their transforma- tion into events, according to the dynamics of new circulation