Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Antonio Fausto Neto 96 work of causing the “primary scene” to emerge would be associ- ated only with the transmission of signs, that would materialize in advertising activity according to the rules of a given productive (journalistic) system. In other words, the information discourse would be the result of a game and rules derived from the consci- entious point of view according to which news is what journalists and the culture of their system define as such. The nature of a more complex communicational pro- cess is only recognized insofar as the conditions of production of the journalistic discourse are involved in other articulations that would try to situate the circulation beyond a transmis- sion dynamic, endowed with activity as an intermediary link between message producers and recipients. It would be an instance that would make it possible for journalistic media to realize their mediating vocation. Circulation would appear as a place of production of contact between the media and society, and it is in this sphere that the mediating vocation attributed to them stands out, because everything we know about the world, we owe to the media (LUHMANN, 2005). Giddens (1991) con - verges with this mediational perspective when remembering the importance of this new dynamic as a possibility of reduc- ing the complexity resulting from the functioning of other so- cial systems (GIDDENS, 1991). Such properties would specify the major activity of journalism as a social practice, since it is through its dispositifs , such as the newspaper, that meanings are prepared by its discursive strategies, reading contracts, etc. (MOUILLAUD, 2002). Such aspects can be observed, for example, in discur- sive operations in information magazines through which the journalistic discourse semanticizes the impeachment processes of Collor (FAUSTO NETO, 1995) and Dilma Rousseff (FAUSTO NETO, 2017), according to the discursive economy of each pub- lication. Discursive schemes are presented to the reader to ex- plain the mediating task of journalistic discourse, under differ - ent perspectives from those proclaimed and circulated for many years, according to the hypotheses developed by McCombs (2009) within the scope of the agenda-setting theory. In these conditions, beyond devices that transmit infor- mation, the journalistic mass media propose, through their offer-