Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Scope and variations of the concept of mediatization 29 Braga (2012) and Fausto Neto (2010) also develop a particular emphasis on the concept of circulation to think about the mediatization of society. In this, more than isolated recep- tions, it is important to analyze the “flow forward” of circulat - ing products, the interactive chain processes, in a permanent displacement, an intense dynamic of decontextualization and recontextualization of messages – with the semiotic and discur- sive implications that this flow entails. On the other hand, Pedro Gilberto Gomes supports Sodré’s perspective, affirming that “ mediatization is the recon- figuration of a communicational ecology (or a media bios)”, and continues: In other words, mediatization is the hermeneutic key for understanding and interpreting reality. So- ciety perceives and perceives itself from the media phenomenon, now extended beyond traditional technological devices. Therefore, it is possible to speak of the media as a locus for understanding society (GOMES, 2017, p. 78). With slightly different formulations, there is a con- vergence in the questions raised by our authors: mediatiza- tion comprises a new socio-cultural environment, introduces new patterns of mediation and interaction, enables new forms of perception and cognition. If the phenomenon is directly re- lated to the emergence and expansion of new communication technologies in society – technologies that do not replace but are added to the previous artifacts – the concept extends beyond the presence of the technique and focuses mainly on its conse- quences and effects, to what society becomes with/from them. Santaella highlights particularly the semiotic effects, the new languages ​and codes, the new dynamics of producing meaning. Sodré’s approach is more comprehensive: there was a change in the anthropological conditions themselves, a new ethos , a new way of living in the fourth bios . Braga is observant to the change in the interactional processes, in the forms of relationship; to- gether with Fausto Neto, he highlights the successive interactive dynamics produced in the circulation of messages, which pro-