Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Jairo Ferreira 256 and hypotheses are a reference for investigations of singular research cases, informed as a method and methodology, in- cluding specific questions to be constructed according to the observables. Keywords: Mediatization; interaction; communication; algo- rithms; elective affinities. I – Theoretical interfaces in the construction of the object We consider here the hypothesis that the problem of circulation and media communication started with the Palo Alto School (WATZLAWICK, 1967). Interesting that this school re - sumes, surpassing, at the same time, the first works of the Chi - cago School (communication as a sharing of experience and as a process of creating social bonds between participants in a dem- ocratic community), and the epistemological inflections derived from research programs institutionalized during the Second World War (information theory, cybernetics, and behaviorism), present in the first five doctorates in the field created in the USA between 1943 and 1952 (PROULX, 2014). Palo Alto also makes an inflection concerning content analysis and quantitative meth - odologies that it does not adopt as a reference (administrative and functionalist research). It allows us to infer that mediatiza- tion research is different from administrative and functionalist research. Assuredly, the fact that Eliseo Verón – as is clear from his article (VERÓN, 2005) – has carried out investigations in Palo Alto explains, in part, the presence of this heritage. But that link is just one of them. It also does not mean the absence of Europe’s thinking. Concepts such as dispositif s, social fields, and public space are elaborated more precisely on the European stage 3 . These concepts also belong to the referential interfaces of the suggested object. 3 To this are added interfaces with concepts that are dear to French semiology and discourse analysis, reflections on the status of the image, and the imaginary (research by Professor Ana Paula da Rosa, also from the Research Line). These interfaces, however, are not discussed in this article.