Abstract
The text presents the results of a theoretical research conducted over the last years: the importance of empathy in communication. It also deals with what can be considered a crisis of empathy, generated by a century of mass communications, presenting relationships between physical/presential and electronically mediated communications, the loss of bodily proprioception (which is fundamental for empathy). The prevalence of electronic communication left its mark both in processes dealing with emotion and empathy, as well as in what we can consider a sort of cognitive debasement. Both of these processes are on the foundation of a social crisis of enormous proportions currently found in Brazil, which is brought out in growing social intolerance and how easily today’s society is affected negatively by disinformation. The proposed pondering is based on multidisciplinary work ranging from conceptual tools in Communications and Media Studies, Psychology and Human Ethology.
Keywords
mass media; body; links; empathy; tolerance