Theme (english version) - Seminário Internacional de Pesquisas em Midiatização e Processos Sociais

Dear colleagues,

It is with pleasure that we share the Call for Papers of the V International Seminar on Research on Mediatization and Social Processes. The Seminar will take place in November and December 2022, in a hybrid form (in person and remotely).

Open for submissions: ~~January 20, 2022~~ January 31, 2022.

Submission of extended abstracts: until May 31, 2022, exclusively via online system (https://midiaticom.org/anais/index.php/seminario-midiatizacao-resumos)

More information: midiatizacao.seminario@gmail.com

Organizing Committee of the V Seminar

Jairo Ferreira (coordenador geral)
Pedro Gilberto Gomes
Ana Paula da Rosa
Antônio Fausto Neto
José Luiz Braga
Moisés Sbardelotto

Midiaticom Editorial Committee

Jairo Ferreira
Dinis Ferreira Cortes
Luisa Schenato Staldoni
João Damásio da Silva Neto
Ângelo Jorge Neckel
Guilherme Martins Batista
Fernanda Carvalho
Igor Mallmann

PARTNER UNIVERSITIES

BRAZIL (UNISINOS, UFSM, UFG, CASPER, ULBRA);

ARGENTINA (UBA and UNR);

FRANCE (Université Grenoble Alpes – UGA and Paul Valery)

SWEDEN (Södertörn)

RUSSIA (ESSE)

HYPER-MEDIATIZATION, INTENSIFICATION, AND THE DEEPENING OF MEDIATIZATION? Applications, platforms, datification, and algorithms under debate

“Love is chemistry. Algorithms start to fail the more complex the person is”.

(Inma Martínez)[1]

The theme of the V Seminar on Research in Mediatization and Social Processes is a social phenomenon evidenced in the practices and discourses of different actors and institutions: platforms, datification, algorithms, artificial intelligence, applications, and their interfaces. As in previous editions, the object of the Seminar is a reflection on the theme from the perspective of mediatization as a way of looking at media processes, questioning, in these processes, what is specifically communicational. Thus, other approaches to the subject are not excluded. There are lines in the communication area that approach it from different perspectives, in addition to mediatization. There is research in various knowledge areas on it – e.g. economics, law, social science, psychology, data science – that will also be welcome in the interdisciplinary debate.

CENTRAL ISSUES

The central issues of the V Seminar refer to the relationships between social practices and discourses about these practices, of actors and institutions, and the suggested epistemological approaches. In particular, the objective is to reflect on the following questions: What is communication when we investigate platforms, datafication, algorithms, artificial intelligence, applications, and their interfaces? What is the relationship between the communication there observed and mutations in media processes? Does this mutation demand new epistemes in the Mediatization and Social Process research line? What are the epistemological and methodological changes suggested by “north” and “south” trends for understanding these mutations? In their interfaces, what do these epistemological and methodological approaches reveal beyond the social discourses on the proposed theme?

WORK GROUPS – AXIS

In the V Seminar, the expanded abstracts are submitted (in a template to be informed at the hot site https://www.midiaticom.org/seminario-midiatizacao), and only then will be distributed in working groups. Thus, it is not necessary to mention the groups. However, indicatively, below we list six out of the thirteen groups from the last edition of the event (IV Edition[2]):

a) Circulation
b) Communication and difference
c) Institutions and organizations
d) Journalism
e) Means, algorithms, and networks
f) Epistemologies of mediatization

SUBTHEMES

The object of this V Seminar – social practices and discourses – is already the theme of investigation in several targeting that indicate its richness, but also its dispersion. By pointing out some of these references, we emphasize that we want more than reports. Without intending to be exhaustive, we list, with references, some specific themes addressed from the perspective of mediatization that may enrich the proposed meeting:

a) New forms of religiosity[3]
b) Changes in the political sphere[4]^/[5]
c) City[6]^,[7] ^{,[8],[9],[10]}
d) Archives[11]
e) Metrics[12]
f) Colonialism[13]
g) Regulation[14]
h) Imaginary[15]
i) Metrics
j) Digital economy

“NORTH” AND “SOUTH” PERSPECTIVES IN AGONISTICS

This Seminar must consider in its WGs tables and debates what has been accumulated in the four previous events and produced over the years by different researchers on mediatization. Also, pertinently with this call, we point out some ways to approach the phenomenon (social practices and discourses about them) in progress, indicating its sources.

Recurrently, current mutation processes are being characterized as hyper-mediatization, deep or intensified. In the three books published, these are words used by authors such as Andreas Hepp[16] and Goran Bolin (from the socio-constructivist perspective); Stig Hjarvard (institutionalist), Bernard Miège (socio-symbolic), and, in what we have grouped as southern perspectives, in this debate: Mario Carlon, Natália Anselmino, Vera França, and Tiago Quiroga.

In the context of reflections from the “north,” in a chapter entitled “From mediatization to deep mediatization,” published in the book Midiatização, polarização e intolerância (2020)[17], Andreas Hepp states that the differentiation of media and its transformation into communication dispositifs in digital format poses the challenge of investigating an environment characterized, by the author, as deep mediatization. This differentiation – although situated in the digital environment – does not refer to the digital in a broad sense but to its specifications and singularities of connection. From this perspective, he proposes that research on mediatization should incorporate the analysis of algorithms and digital infrastructure in the way it approaches its objects of analysis (HEPP, 2020, p. 29-30).

On the other hand, one of the references of institutionalist perspectives, Stig Hjarvard, speaks of intensified mediatization resulting from new media, platforms, and algorithmic logic. In his article, the author considers that the north perspectives, in the face of the new empirical evidence, update their approaches and dialogue, with strains, about what happens in a context that includes the transformations of the so-called digital capitalism. On the one hand, there is the socio-constructivist perspective that emphasizes the construction of communicational (or communicative) relationships between interacting actors, according to the specificities and singularities of the means transformed into dispositifs; on the other, the institutionalist one highlights the adaptation (or accommodation) of actors and institutions to the logic of the media.

Bernard Miège[18] questions the process as part of hyper-mediatization. He wonders whether higher connectivity increases communication and whether networks are more democratic, alternatively approaching Flichy’s thesis on connected individualism. Also, in discussion with Flichy, Miège[19] emphasizes that such means are not only connectors between intermediation and communication dispositifs, but also articulators among producers and consumers of mercantile objects, configuring, in these relationships, new forms of the cultural industry, not referring just to Spotify, Deezer, and YouTube. It puts him in strain with constructivist perspectives, as the means are materialized, which demands perspectives of political economy and not constructivism that would deny the material interpositions appropriated by the capital. This “new infrastructure of capitalism,” according to propositions in discussions with Gresec[20], is inseparable from massive data capture and process management by algorithms. It is also the analysis perspective of Ilya Kiriya[21].

Miège also suggests that perhaps semiotic-pragmatic approaches would be productive in overcoming the differences and contradictions between socio-symbolic and semi-anthropological approaches. Perhaps, something similar to what Daniel Peraya[22] writes; when, when talking about platforms, he proposes the perspective of the semiotic-technical-pragmatic dispositif as an alternative to the restrict analysis of social discourses proposed by Verón, as he considers the immersion of devices in a social context (mediations) and explains the place of technological means in the processes with which they establish non-deterministic relationships.

In the southern lineages, Mario Carlón has been stressing the need for the investigation not to be restricted to the intra-systemic aspects of networks (and platforms) but that they should be related to the inter-systemic (thus, considering the relations with what he calls massive media). These relationships, in Verón’s heritage, suggest that they are analyzed from the perspective of circulation. Natália Anselmino dialogues with this perspective[23], as does Ada Silveira[24]. Vera França[25], in turn, develops, as well as Luis Mauro Martino – and the other authors referenced here – a genealogical effort of the concept, including the relationship with contemporary events, especially when current media are on platforms and managed by algorithms.

From a critical perspective, we highlight the reflections of Tiago Quiroga[26] and Muniz Sodré in A sociedade incivil: mídia, liberalism e finanças. Quiroga reflects on the atrophy of time resulting from the acceleration of circulation in exponential flows of information, which puts in check the alterity demand for the construction of knowledge. With articulations such as time as the “bias” of circulation or image grammars as the “bias” of the visible, Tiago invites us to reflect on these processes beyond the contexts in which we are inserted.

Muniz Sodré^14,4, in his studies on mediatization, uses the concept of media bios derived from the three bios of Aristotle: bios politikós, bios praktikós, bios theoretikós. Sodré proposes media bios that create a dimension of contact with society through a “semiotic machine simulating the world.^14,5” That bios involves another way of being in the world, modifying social relations and the form of practicing politics. Hence, we also suggest the ambiance originated by media processes as central to the concept of mediatization, bringing to light a reading key for the consideration of algorithms, datification, applications, and related interfaces in their importance in society today.

These perspectives are not necessarily antagonistic to cyberculture perspectives. Several of the questions raised here are contradictory, productive, with this line of research, as may be seen in the conference and debate with André Lemos at the Seminar Lo Contemporáneo at the University of Buenos Aires[27]. Interfaces with cyberculture perspectives will be welcome, including questions on mediatization as an anthropocentric perspective.

Deep mediatization or hyper-mediatization may be semantics under construction, valid for a debate ocurring in convergence zones. Thus, concerns appear in Vera França[28], even when asked if this new environment can continue to be analyzed from the perspective of mediatization.

In these perspectives, we place the reflection on mediatization in media processes, which has increasingly become a key, fundamental concept; essential to describe the present and the history of the media and the communicative change that was and continues to occur. Mediatization seemed to be used as a concept to describe the expansion process of different technical media and consider the interrelationships between communicative media change and sociocultural change. Thus, it was necessary to try to understand how the growing expansion of the means of communication changes our construction of culture, society, and, consequently, of different social practices. This angle has been strongly discussed within the scope of Mediatization and Social Processes, at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), from Pedro Gilberto Gomes, Antônio Fausto Neto, José Luiz Braga, Jairo Ferreira, and Ana Paula da Rosa.

REFERENCES

ANDERSEN, Jack. Archiving, Ordering, and Searching: Search Engines, Algorithms, Databases, and Deep Mediatization. Media, Culture & Society, Chicago, vol. 40, p. 1135-1150, 2018. Available at: https://bit.ly/3IKXIPM

ANSELMINO, Raimondo Natalia. Colectivos, circulación de discursos sociales y movilización ciudadana: el caso #RosarioSangra. In: FERREIRA, Jairo; FAUSTO NETO, Antonio; GOMES, Pedro Gilberto; BRAGA, J. L.; ROSA, A. P. (Org.). Midiatização, polarização e intolerância: entre ambientes, meios e circulações. Santa Maria: FACOS-UFSM, 2020, v. 1, p. 123-147. Available at: https://bit.ly/3IJ0jdd.

ATTENEDER, Helena. Geomedia: Manifestations of Power as Mediatized Communication Practices – A Foucauldian Approach. GI_Forum, Salzburg, vol. 6, 2018. Available at: https://bit.ly/33kTjTv.

BOLIN, Göran. A mentalidade métrica. Anais de Resumos Expandidos do Seminário Internacional de Pesquisas em Midiatização e Processos Sociais, [S.l.], v. 1, n. 4, out. 2020. Available at: https://bit.ly/3ynPZCx.

BUCHER, Taina. The algorithmic imaginary: exploring the ordinary affects of Facebook algorithms. Information, Communication & Society, vol. 20, p. 30-44, 2015. Available at: https://bit.ly/3ILz6GN.

CARLÓN, Mario. Individuos, colectivos y polarización en la inestable situación generada

por la mediatización y circulación contemporánea del sentido. In: FERREIRA, Jairo; FAUSTO NETO, Antonio; GOMES, Pedro Gilberto; BRAGA, J. L.; ROSA, A. P. (Org.). MIDIATIZAÇÃO, POLARIZAÇÃO E INTOLERÂNCIA (ENTRE AMBIENTES, MEIOS E CIRCULAÇÕES). 1. ed. SANTA MARIA: FACOS-UFSM, 2020. v. 1. 260 p . Available at: https://midiaticom.org/files/midiatizacao-polarizacao-intolerancia/

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COULDRY, Nick; YU, Jun. Deconstructing datafication’s brave new world. New Media & Society, Chicago, vol. 20, p. 4473-4491, 2018. Available at: https://bit.ly/3EWqACs.

DOORN, Niels Van. A new institution on the block: On platform urbanism and Airbnb citizenship. New Media & Society, Chicago, vol. 22, 2020. Available at: https://bit.ly/30nyCFn.

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JANSSON, André. Interveillance: A New Culture of Recognition and Mediatization. Media and Comunication, vol. 3, n. 3,2015. Available at: https://bit.ly/3IPC90O.

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[1] Available at: https://bit.ly/3ESp8B0.

[2] Available at: https://bit.ly/3EWKuNL.

[3] Available at: https://bit.ly/3oUHls7.

[4] Available at: https://bit.ly/3m5uIZm.

[5] Available at: https://bit.ly/3E2HPks.

[6] Available at: https://bit.ly/3GNmpcu.

[7] Available at: https://bit.ly/3m5uNfC.

[8] Available at: https://bit.ly/3oXDuL3.

[9] Available at: https://bit.ly/3dPssB0.

[10] Available at: https://bit.ly/3ISJg8m.

[11] Available at: https://bit.ly/3m6n0hz.

[12] Available at: https://bit.ly/3ESpJme.