Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Digital social networks and relation systems 243 participants, and in the activation of all the material or symbolic components that are relevant to the processes in action. Here, we can use Michel Foucault’s concept of what he calls “dispositif”: What I’m trying to pick out with this term is, first - ly, a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consist- ing of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative mea- sures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions–in short, the said as much as the unsaid. Such are the elements of the apparatus. The dispositif itself is the system of relations 2 that can be established between these elements. (FOUCAULT, 1994, p. 299). Systems of relations (explicitly formulated or not) be- come a pattern for the interactions carried out. If now we have a reticular interactional process, using social media, it is because society develops such systems of relations . It is the socially developed systemof relations, not tech- nology, that characterizes a network. Thus, different relation- ships established with distinct objectives, to face differently ad - dressed problems, will be differentiated networks, even if they activate the same technologies. Surely, these technologies are part of the heterogeneous elements activated – engraving them- selves with their characteristics and focusing on the systems, but providing diverse interactions, from situation to situation. Another aspect that must be added is that the systems of relations from the digital social networks do not only pres- ent that marked diversity, also they show themselves, quite fre- quently and with intensity, as incomplete, tentative, indefinite systems under construction. Perhaps, more than variation, this is what characterizes them today – the fact that they are a space for open experimentation. For this reason, it is consistent to examine themmainly from this situation of incompleteness and experimentalism. It 2 It is interesting to note that the expression used by Foucault to deal with sys- tems of relations is the word "reseau" (network) – used in pre-digital times in a more focused meaning than the current one: to indicate complex relationships that form a system.