Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Mediatization, communication, and algorithms: a theoretical-methodological proposal... 269 These examples show that the algorithms are syllogis- tic constructs, operating with what Peirce designated as deduc- tion (from expert decision-making systems) and induction (al- gorithms that “learn” according to probabilistic occurrences). It is no longer a question of the algorithms of culture, artisanal or manufactured, but of those materialized in means appropriate to capital – in a path that passes through advanced manufactur- ing and industry as appropriations of work in general, but es- pecially the cultural industry, and it comes, with artificial intel - ligence and expert systems, to the appropriation of knowledge of modern technical-scientific knowledge. The irritation of the communication field, however, comes to the fore, as it becomes aware of the long and essential process of alienation, with the configurations suggested by the new media, which retroact on all previous processes of appro- priation by capitalist formats. Thus, mediatization, a universal process, is particularized as power relations (economic, politi- cal, and cultural) derived from appropriations. II – Method and methodology In terms of observation, the investigation of media processes suggested here does not aim at the interaction of two people in clinics. It is the object observed in Watzlawick et alii (1972). In media processes, we are always open to the investiga- tion of a multiplicity of actors, located in different institutional positions, using various means. This broader focus removes the object of the clinical analysis proposed by psychology, without this signifying adherence to a sociological analysis (since it is not a question of reflecting on social demographics according to the epistemologies of positivist sociology). This perspective comes close to ethnography – where the object is the behavior of collectives, even when they are not institutionally pre-designed or are constructed in interactions and can only be “seen” by ad hoc analysis, related to the interac- tions of the present. The object, therefore, refers to the interac - tions of actors with a givenmedium (resulting from a production system to also be analyzed, according to the algorithms, interac-