Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Scope and variations of the concept of mediatization 25 In Brazil, the theme of new technologies, digital culture, or “cyberculture” has been attracting the attention of research- ers since the end of the 20th century 2 . The first formulations and theorizations about the new scenario are indebted, among oth- ers, to Lúcia Santaella and Muniz Sodré. Lúcia Santaella published, in 1992, the book Cultura das mídias , pioneering work in Brazil in dealing with this new reality of expansion and interpenetration of different media and its impact on culture. In 2003, in Culturas e artes do p ós- humano. Da cultura das mídias à cibercultura , the author pres- ents a division of cultural eras into six types of training: oral culture, written culture, printed culture, mass culture, media culture, and digital culture (SANTAELLA, 2003a). If the concept of mass culture emphasized the homogenization and pasteuri- zation of cultural contents, Santaella points out how much the diversification of the media has altered and expanded the re- lations between different cultural productions, the interaction between distinct codes, the hybridization of languages. Around the 1980s, the 1990s, new devices added up to the mass me- dia environment – VCRs, photocopiers, and, then, cable TV – al- lowing for segmentation and diversification of consumption, as well as individualized choices, making the transition to the ar- rival of digital media. This period is what the author calls media culture, a preliminary stage for digital culture, a contemporary phase, marked chiefly by the convergence of the media, by the exacerbation that the production and circulation of information has reached today – “a true general fraternization of all forms of communication and culture, in a dense and hybrid boiling” (SANTAELLA, 2003b, p. 28). More than the six eras pointed out by Santaella, it is interesting to highlight the approach that the author seeks to imprint: it is not a mediacentric approach but an emphasis on the effects of language and meaning that are felt: 2 A Working Group (WG), dealing with this new media theme, was created at Compós (National Association of Graduate Programs in Communication) in 1995 (and the WG started to operate the following year), with the name <Com - munication and Technological Society>. In 2002, the WG changed its name to <Informational Technologies of Communication and Society>. In the reclivation of 2006, the WG was approved with the title <Communication and Cybercul - ture>, a name that it keeps until today..