Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

When the eyes do not blink nor stop: from the operation-image to the rise to the flow 199 In this way, we identify that there is a path between the appearance, valuing in interactions, the process of reitera- tion, disappearance, and reappearance of specific images. In this path, there is the autonomy of image concerning the event since the references made are more directed to the imagistic force than to the fact itself. Let us return to Aylan Kurdi: we no longer need his image to see him as an adherent figure, a summary- image of the crisis in Syria. However, in recent years hundreds of other children’s faces have appeared. That is, it is not a question of the crisis itself, but of transforming images valued in circula- tion as decals or totem-images (ROSA, 2012). The concept of totem-images, anchored in the formula- tions of Cassirer and Durkheim, refers to images that summon a deep social bond, thus activating a collective imaginary. How- ever, the central difference of the totem-image is that it implies restrictions on the access of new images or different images and on the interpretation itself since the first images become a kind of barrier that prevents their exclusion or questioning. It is im- portant to say that, in the case under analysis, the restrictive im- ages are exactly those produced in a possibly free form by insti- tutions and social actors based on mediatization logics. José Luiz Braga (2012) points out that there are differ- ences between media logics and mediatization logics. The first one accounts for the crossing of business processes, anchored in the cultural industry, in the daily life of the citizen, and the uses of media technologies and their materiality. However, me- diatization logics are more complex and refers to the interactive process of mediatization. In other words, it is not about the in- fluence or impact of the media on social action, but what society does with the media and their dispositifs. In addition to crossing fields, this means that the logics of mediatization raise experi- mental strategies and tactics on the part of social actors. Surely, many of them echo the marks of media logics, but they are not restricted to the reproduction, being far from that. For Braga, the mediatization logics are something that we should call, more accurately, logical attempts or experimental processes, tend- ing to generate, by development and selection, fu-