Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Mediatization, communication, and algorithms: a theoretical-methodological proposal... 263 occupy a special place in the relationships between other insti- tutions, actors, and uses of the available dispositifs , also because they allow the differentiation of accesses, usages, practices, and potential appropriations, specifying the dispositifs available. In this sense, we consider that there is a dispositif when there is a consolidated matrix, historically, of social uses of the media, a configurator of social practices, which goes beyond institutional places and actors, specifically media or not. That is, the dispositif is not the available form: it must be inhabited by actors and in- stitutions so that, in usages and practices, it exists. When this oc- curs, it is named, thus, gaining an anthropological demarcation. Algorithmic logic managing co tent, schedule, indexing, and agency interactions The algorithm is, first, a sign – which articulates infer - ential rules and operations that organize content, schedules, interactions, and indexing (FERREIRA, 2020). The algorithms, in the contemporary, become the means of the media – manag- ing the media of content, programming, indexing, and interac- tion (FERREIRA, 2019). The technical dimensions (specifically computational languages, for example) and technological di- mensions are subordinate to these inferential rules and opera- tions – which are appropriations of the algorithms of culture and nature. Like other linguistic signs appropriated by the field of communication, the algorithm comes to us as a metaphor for an infinity of meanings summoned by a semantic field. In this broad universe of meanings, it is valid for the execution of a cu- linary recipe or diagnoses about the climate, including city man- agement, politics, etcetera . But this proposition has a difficulty, which is to consid - er algorithm only what is material. We suggest another starting point: the algorithm is, above all, a mental experience. Without this, life would be impossible. It refers to the system of possi- bilities and alternative decisions, sequenced in the execution of operations to be carried out. Whenever there is an algorithm, life seems to get simple. If we are going to travel, we have a set of operations to be sequenced (preparing clothes and accesso-