Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Digital social networks and relation systems 241 as diverse as the variety of apparatuses and operations made by society. Moreover, today we can consider that the diversity of hardware, software, and applications derives from demands socially expressed or intuited by developers. In this situation, we cannot renounce diversified ana - lytics, either by the practical processes of society and the con- cerned social fields or by the disciplines and theoretical lines involved in this quest for understanding. Rather than proposing macro-explanatory theories about the set, our approach should be to understand the diversity of occurrences and situations. However, this does not imply accepting an infinite di - versification of episodic descriptions limited to the empiricist and dispersed case by case. These analytics cannot be restricted to an empirical descriptiveness that only highlights, describes, surprises, or draws very general conclusions directly from epi- sodes; that is, the research should not be limited to the case nor intended any typicality in the characteristics there perceived. Parallel to the analytics, we also see the importance of cross-sectional views, which make it possible to articulate the discoveries and knowledge there obtained and to generate learning from the mutual tension between different interpreta- tive proposals. To reflect reflexively on that diversity, one must also note the common elements, as they can provide the dimen- sions upon which variations will be found. What will allow a work of continuity of theoretical elaboration is the possibility of investigating, in each case, de- termined characteristics that may present themselves as dimen- sions of variety – to multiply, in the set of case studies, these perceived dimensions and the variations found in each one. * At one of the discussion tables of the II International Seminar on Mediatization, Professor Muniz Sodré referred to the hoarding of contemporary life by economics and technol- ogy. I would add, in Brazil: and by (bad) politics. Indeed, the debates to which the interest of most digital networks turns, as well as the scope of the interactional experiments made, suf- fer, from the perspective of the social participant, from one or more of these angles.