Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Mediatization, communication, and algorithms: a theoretical-methodological proposal... 261 Thus, the materialization of mental experience is not constituted directly and automatically in social terms. It is a pro- cess, which occurs at different levels, if thought from the per- spective of mediatization: in the accesses, uses, practices, and social appropriations of these material media; in the circuits engendered in these uses and social practices. The circuits 5 es- tablished between producers and consumers are retroactive, without considering the domain of production systems overcon- sumption or vice-versa. These circular, retroactive, as well as in- formational, processes are semiotic and transform social fields (social space of specialists, in culture, economics, and politics), private spaces, and the public space itself. In this context, our empirical object is digital media in networks, particularly when they are managed by algorithms, which can cover digital media of content, programming (ra- dio and television), indexing (from the library to the network search tools), and interaction ( Facebook , Instagram , What- sApp , etcetera ). Media and dispositifs In this section, I return to the issue of media consider- ing the following questions: What is the relationship between media and dispositifs ? When are the means and the dispositifs media? Do all material media refer to mediatization? Our per- spective under elaboration suggests that it does not: 1. Only the media that influence interactions in the public visibility space refer to mediatization. This insertion is not steady, considering each media. In this sense , WhatsApp interests as an object of me- diatization when interactions are public, which is not set, as interactions that occur there may “leak." 2. It is necessary to consider ubiquity: the means be- comes media when they are deferred, in time and space. Here, also, there is no fixed design, but it seems clear that the mobility of material, technical and technological signs, in time and space, is accel- erated by algorithms (exponentially). 5 We will return to the circuit semantics in the development of the proposal.