Television and reflexivity in Brazil

Abstract

The present essay approaches the concept of ethics as applied to the empirical study of the contents aired through nationwide communicational structures, in the sense of identifying those mechanisms that make it dynamic. A concern is shown about how the institutions of communication delimit the specificity of their discursive ethics. The analysis shows that the self-compression, the rationalization of experience, the thematization of risks and of ontological insecurity of life in complex societies are the procedures of such institutions. The contingent present and the uncertain future are focalized within an explicative network whose goal is to control the elements that might threaten the sense of control over everyday life. They perform a public exercise of updating individuals about those themes that demand a permanent rationalization, which, however, are not based anymore on the humanist critique as its ethical referent, which has been, so far, hegemonic in the public self legitimating of these institutions of communication.