Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Antonio Fausto Neto 108 belongs to an extensive family of logics and acts that transcend the legal ritual. It is permeated by the “broth” of media acts, like interviews of prosecutors to the media; signed articles, and a book published by Judge Moro; interrogation routines always broadcast to the media, from the provision of its content by the MPF communication services; also by the public relations cam- paigns that aim to favor the positioning of the police and legal in- stitutions ahead of the operations; and, finally, training to which legal operators are submitted to master their media operations. If the tapping process carried out by Judge Moro had its material subsequently recalled by determination of a higher court, the effects of the circulation of its contents would already have gone much further. Although there was a “gap” between recording and suspension of tapping, and even though the ma- terials were kept out of the investigation process, the actions to mediate the content of the wiretapping was carried out. Other institutional concerns could do nothing else aimed at containing the dissemination of the messages from the surveillance wire- taps, in the face of the avalanche of the messages that would be capillarized, discursively, in the entire social environment. That is, if the recordings were formally removed from the circuits, they moved on in the form of other texts, streamlined by other systems, actors, and social networks. Unlike the cases reflected above, we understand that the characteristics of the mediatization of recording legal authorities’ speeches, whose content was revealed by The Intercept, bring together other interpretive clues alongside the many that were raised, alleging, for example, their illegality, or considering that the content of their records was untrue. If both previous cases strained by the normative aspects of the systems which generated them went on, even so, the normative actions could not equally stop the paths taken by the messages of “Vaza Jato.” And although some “retroactions” believed they could retain them, such as the arrest of possible suspects for the leak, it would be impossible to stop ongoingmeanings. The recordings of the legal actors’ speech- es, which were besieged in a shadow zone , escape the borders of their universe of production, enter other circuits in the form of journalistic texts, according to systemic couplings not previously designed, gaining territories of countless discursivities.