Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Magali do Nascimento Cunha 160 Dilma Rousseff to the Presidency of the Republic. Surprisingly, from then on, and even more after 2014, evangelicals of different denominations, identified with the discourse assumed by lead - ers of the evangelical bench and by celebrities from the religious scene, began to publicly identify themselves as “conservative” and “right-wing” (CUNHA, 2017a). The June 2013 protests and the conservative movements derived from it, the election of the most conservative National Congress since 1964 in the 2014 election (DIAP, 2014), and the inauguration of Eduardo Cunha as president of the Federal Chamber provided the enabling en- vironment for groups identified with religious, theological, and political conservatism to revitalize themselves and start to ex- pose more publicly. It is possible to identify that it is in the space of the media polis that political life has developed with more intensity and passion, with the construction and reconstruction of world views (imaginary) and with discourses made public and calls for collective actions. Here, we have what Fausto Neto (2010) calls “complex games of offer and recognition.” Through them, moral values are legitimized while others are delegitimized. In the world of re- ligion, this is very intense; it is enough to observe the offer of the religious discourse of “salvation of the family that is at risk,” with the proposals and campaigns for sexual rights on the part of women and LGBTIs (CUNHA, 2017a). This offer promoted the identification and recognition of evangelicals and conservative Roman Catholics to the point, for example, of consolidating the term “gender ideology” as the boundary of a new identity fron- tier (CUNHA, 2017b). In this sense, the logics of loyalty and “reading con- tracts” (FAUSTO NETO, 2010) are put in check. Evangelicals who historically condemn Catholics as idolaters and pagans break this frontier through the media and rupture the classic logic of hostility and anti-ecumenism, through the association of com- bating a common enemy. Published research on the relationship between me- dia, religion, and politics indicated a predominance of the con- servative evangelical current in Brazil in traditional and digital religious media spaces (CUNHA, 2017a). It is a reflection of the