Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Vera V. França 32 This would be, for example, the focus brought by Mu- niz Sodré’s concept of media bios or fourth bios . The media field would have to do with another eidos (substance) – a simulated, virtual reality, endowed with its self-referential logic. In this context, the virtual assumes a higher phenomenological weight than the classic representations of the historical reality, elabo- rated and developed in function of a semantically objective con - nection with the real (SODRÉ, 2002, p. 239). This perspective also intersects Pedro Gomes’ think- ing, when the author distinguishes media processes and social reality – the latter putting itself as a raw material for media pro- cesses, which would be building another reality, marked by the producer’s gaze, a third reality – “which resembles the original reality but does not fully identify with it” (GOMES, 2017, p. 44). - an analytical-procedural approach . This constitutes a combination of the two types of approaches presented by Braga – the sectorized and the macro approach. It is a type of perspec- tive that, affirming intense changes in social life, due to shifts in interactional processes with the incorporation of new commu- nication technologies (a macro view, therefore), seeks to appre- hend these changes through the study of the new configurations assumed/produced in specific practices, intersecting different institutional fields. Such an approach encourages empirical ana - lyzes of the mediatization processes in different sectors of soci- ety. In addition to the widespread emphasis on the effects of the “mediatization” of politics, it is possible to perceive this perspec- tive in research conducted by Braga, on different themes 5 , by Fausto Neto (2012), on the mediatization of scientific discourse, among others. IV – Approximation/distinction of close concepts Innumerable concepts have been created in the last hundred years to refer to the advent of the communication so- ciety, to the emergence of means that have revolutionized com- 5 Among the master and doctoral works supervised by Braga, we mention Mon- alisa Pontes Xavier’s thesis (2014), which is about the mediatization of psycho- analytic therapies.