ABSTRACT
The new system of social interaction created by the Internet and social networks has been metaphorically linked to the human limbic system, that is, to the medial brain surface, which accounts for behaviour, learning, memory and motivation. The communication paradigm was supported by analogue and linear information platforms, which allowed the distance between broadcaster and receiver to shine through. The media were becoming intercommunicative thanks to unmediated feedback. The hypothesis of an electronic democracy arose from this technical possibility of instantaneous, global communication, supposedly capable of introducing difference into a dialogic game. Mediation performs the symbolic transit, or the ‘communication’ of property from one element to another, by means of a third party, which is a means of articulating two diverse elements. It is politically imperative, however, to rid this theoretical diagnosis of the imposition of the communicational code from any apocalyptic perspective.
