Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

13 Foreword Wilson Gomes This book faces an impressive challenge in taking on the subject of mediatization. The task makes sense since the UNISINOS’ Communication area, which brought together the participants of the symposium that gave rise to this collection, is recognized by studies on mediatization, as a phenomenon or concept, and concentrates a large part of the production in the area. José Luiz Braga, Antônio Fausto Neto, Pedro Gilberto Gomes, Jairo Getúlio Ferreira, and Ana Paula da Rosa form a con- sistent part of the bibliography on the subject, systematically organize international congresses in which they set in motion their national and foreign networks of collaborators and special- ized interlocutors, in addition to years of supervising disserta- tions and theses in the area. The proposal is, however, a considerable challenge, as the reader of this work will quickly realize. Firstly, because in addition to the more general understandings of the phenomena and concerns referred to by the term mediatization , in the most exact and precise territory of concepts and definitions there is no peace at all. And from what can be seen from the theoretical foundations present in the various essays and articles that form the chapters of this book, the authors deal realistically with the still considerable level of polysemy and the competing taxono- mies and applications present in the field. The idea of mediatization, in general, is based on the assumption that in the contemporary world there are different social fields, on the one hand, and there is the communication field, on the other, both relatively autonomous and independent, but that they overlap, they are involved at different levels of in- terface and synergy and symbiosis patterns, since the distinct