We Have Never Been Mediatized 303 towards the dawn of civilization, but this environment not only includes the institutions of the media (as it does in the European social-constructivist perspective, but also the “semiosis”, that is, the sign systems. This means taking into consideration also the technologies by which signs are disseminated and circulate in society, as well as the meanings produced among those who are living in this symbolic environment. The Latin American approach to mediatization is theorized among scholars such as Eliseo Verón (e.g. 2014a), Jairo Ferreira (2007), Antônio Fausto Neto (e.g. Fausto Neto et al. 2008), and, distinctly summarized by the late Ciro Marcondes (2022), in what became his last theo- retical statement. To the contrary of the European approaches, the Latin American combines the longer historical perspective and the view upon the media as always already integrated in the societal process with a strong dose of semiotics. This focus on the textual side to mediatization can partly be explained by the fact that several of the Latin American researchers had their PhD train- ing in France in the 1960s and 1970s (these influences are discussed in Scolari et al., 2021), which means that the formation of their thought is in the same environment and at the same time as Baudrillard’s. But where Baudrillard keeps a shorter historical perspective, the Latin Americans insist on going back to the cave paintings (Marcondes, 2022) as a first phase in the media- tization process. This also means that one avoids the shortsightedness and mass media-centric dimensions of the Baudrillard- ian approach (as well as his dystopian vision on the possibilities of communicative exchange). There is, however, a difference in terminology that needs to be addressed here. What is in Europe called the social-con- structivist approach, Eliseo Verón (2014a) calls the anthropological approach. But both the social-constructivist approach in Europe does place the media, and the “media process” in Verón’s terms, inside of society, integrated as an immanent feature in the social fabric of human activity. This also means that the ques- tion of causality, that sets its mark so clearly on the institutional approach where media institutions (e.g. journalism) impact on other societal institutions (e.g. politics), becomes if not irrele-
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