Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

José Luiz Braga 240 strategies) make social networks of any kind, previous or new, go beyond their intended boundaries — whether intentional or not. Even when intended — or precisely motivated by this pur- suit of range extension — there is no effective control over the actual range or how this overtaking is accomplished. III – Analytics vs. General Explanations The academic interest develops, and the explanatory theories multiply, seeking to, theoretically, grasp the cacophony resulting from the profusion of objectives and tactics, correlated with the processes in society. With this, networks are studied from several angles: • According to the social field of its occurrence – political, cultural, economic, organizational, en- tertainment, from the most diverse professional sectors, and individual initiatives. There, specific knowledge about the fields of occurrence is acti - vated, and their usual practices become a reference for the perception of displacements. • According to the disciplines of knowledge in the human and social sciences – sociology, linguistics, anthropology, education, political science, etc. – which address the communicational issues in- volved in their disciplinary concerns. So, we cannot assert each common pattern of explana- tions about the frame of mediatization, and, in this, we do not have adequately in-depth conceptions to grasp the digital social networks and their processes yet. The attempt to find a tech - nological explanation – to attribute to the technological devel- opment the guidance of society – immediately collides with the variety of occurrences and experiments that activate the same technical feasibilities offered to do different things. Assuredly, it is pertinent to observe and make interpre- tations about the functionalities of each media apparatus and its technologies – which allows researching its specific incidences in singular networks. But this approach also generates analytics