Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

José Luiz Braga 244 is not just a diversity of occurrences, but also an experimental diversity, of trial and error. * It is common to think of a system as a ready and regulated structure, which determines the events in the space to which the system reaches. The system per se is seen as code. This perception must be made more complex. I consider “code” every process, material element (natural or produced), gesture, symbol, simple or complex, that is objectively available and somehow shared (even if partially) between participants in an interaction. Such shared elements serve as mediation for common action among the participants, whatever is that intended action. Thus, they provide the basis for interaction, for the communicational process – which con- cerns more the joint action than the simple passing of messages from one to another (although this may be part of that action). I see the systems of relations – of interaction – as struc- tures, socially elaborated, with the following minimal character- istics (differently realized): • Not just a code – corresponding to the system itself, but a diversity of confluent codes also competing with one another. • In parallel, the necessary codes are always in- sufficient, they should be complemented by the strategic realization processes required to adjust the codes among themselves, and theirs with the unique occurrences of reality. This strategic scope implies a constant tentative work, of interactional arrangements, to make such adjustments feasible. • With this, the participants of all social processes, although arousing cultural, political, institutional, professional rules, inevitably improvise their dai- ly lives. An inferential competence, correlatively, enables our built-in patterns to fit the particular circumstance. • In addition, although we always find, in culture, already established patterns, these patterns were