Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Mediatization, communication, and algorithms: a theoretical-methodological proposal... 257 The guiding thread is the concept of mediatization as a bundle of relationships suggested by epistemological interfaces activated in the construction of the object. This concept differs from two others operative in the ‘north’: a) an approach that we consider ascending – from social constructions of the media, and another, descending – from media to culture that tends to see mediatization as derived from the interaction and accom- modation of different fields to the logics of the media. We call the first one ascending because it considers mediatization as a derivative and not a specific process, the foundation of a social displacement that overlaps the propensities of social construc- tions of meaning made possible by the social uses of the media; the second one overestimates the media and their logics, orga- nized or institutionalized, and does not problematize the con- text in which the media are also immersed in a process that, not only due to social uses, overlaps them, downstream. Between the downward and upward movements, we emphasize the transformation of the media interaction matrix, which will be specified in the interfaces activated here. In these, the concept of circulation (like a bundle of relations between production and reception) is central, including the processes of upward and downward circulation, but also what occurs within the circuits configured by mediatized interactions. M diatized interaction and interposition of media In one of the chapters of a work published in Brazil, Verón (2005) addresses the issue of the double bond. It is an ar- ticle written with Carlos Sluzki, in which the authors address the strain between dependence and independence, the distinction between self and non-self, differentiating the symptoms (patho- genesis) into hysterical, phobic, and obsessive. It is also known that Verón’s relationship with the Palo Alto School continues, even when he approaches circulation as relationships between systems. It is necessary to situate this interface with the Palo Alto School, which we consider productive. For that, we mobi- lizedWatzlawick et alii (1972). First, we ponder that the circular relations between the sender and the receiver problematized by