Arranjos sociotécnicos midiatizados e suas controvérsias : um estudo sobre a tecnologia semi-automatizada de impedimento na Copa do Mundo FIFA de 2022

Abstract

This thesis investigates the implementation of the Semi-Automated Offside Technology (SAOT) in FIFA World Cup 2022. Anchored in the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and science and technology studies (STS), we adopt a theoretical and methodological approach that argues that technologies are not monolithic artifacts, but sociotechnical networks instead. Therefore, SAOT is seen as a mediatized sociotechnical arrangement, that is, a network of actors convoked to act according to the technology's script (Akrich, 1992|2014), intertwined in the media dispositif (Alzamora; d'Andréa; Ziller, 2018). The empirical research is divided into two movements. At first, we investigate, based on the documentation about the technology released by FIFA, the elements that constitute the SAOT's script (namely, the technologies and processes that integrate its operational chain). We highlight the major relevance of the imagetic and infrastructural aspect in the technology's script. Firstly, we approach the imagens interpreted by SAOT's computers as operative images, based in Farocki's (2001|2003) proposal to understand these images. Then, to talk about the 3D animations generated by SAOT, we evoke the concept of visual discourses (Schmidl, 2021) to try and comprehend how the SAOT's mediatic emergences - its 3D animations - cause updates in footbal's media dispositif (Alzamora; d'Andréa, Ziller, 2018). From the infrastructural point of view, we assess how the implementation of SAOT in football required major expenses in new infrastructures and what this infrastructures say about the reality in which the World Cup was promoted and what FIFA sees as the future of football. In our second analytic movement, we do a controversy mapping (Munk; Venturini, 2021) based on the mediatized engagements with technology (d'Andréa; Stauff, 2022) that we observed in the social media platform Twitter about one particular controversial SAOT usage in the match between Saudi Arabia and Argentina. Observing these mediatized engagements, we focus on internet memes ironizing SAOT. We also investigate the work of a specialist, critical to the technology, called Nacho Tellado, that was interviewed in an Argentine sports television show, reporting an alleged mistake in the polemic play. Finally, we analyze how this research showed us that the entanglement to the media dispositif prevents the blackboxing of sociotechnical arrangements and the controversies expose characteristics that would not be visible in an investigation solely of the technology's institutionalities.