Published by De Gruyter Mouton

Volume 47 Issue 4 - Special Issue: Mediated recognition: Identity, respect, and social justice in a changing media environment Guest Editors: Olivier Driessens and Torgeir Uberg Nærland

Issue of Communications

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Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available November 29, 2022

Articles

Open Access November 11, 2022

Mediated recognition: Identity, respect, and social justice in a changing media environment

Olivier Driessens, Torgeir Uberg Nærland

Page range: 505-515

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Publicly Available July 14, 2022

From mediated to datafied recognition: The role of social media news feeds

Bruno Campanella

Page range: 516-531

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Abstract

This article conducts a brief review of works dealing with recognition processes in media environments, with a special focus on social media platforms. It argues that efforts to analyze dynamics of recognition in datafied spaces should take into consideration the working logics of such platforms, which are responsible for the organization of media practices around the creation of economic value for the companies. The article examines the news feeds as a type of social space where these logics are manifested in the decisions of the platforms about what and when to show to their users. In this context, practices of sociability aimed at increasing recognition in social media platforms should be understood within a broader movement of datafication of society, which deepens the presence of capitalist logics in social life.

Open Access July 15, 2022

Mediated recognition in campaigns for justice: The case of the Magdalene laundry survivors

Eirik Vatnøy, Dawn Wheatley

Page range: 532-552

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Abstract

The recognition perspective is a valuable lens through which identity struggles and historical marginalization and abuses can be explored. This study analyzes Ireland’s Justice for Magdalene (JFM) campaign between 2009–2013; JFM was a group that fought for a state apology and redress for women and girls confined to Catholic-run laundries between the 1920s and 1990s. Such institutions formed part of the post-colonial Irish identity and church-state structure, within which many women and girls once suffered. We document the rhetorical dimension of how a resolution was ultimately reached following the campaign’s transformation of women’s individual experiences into the collective voice of an advocacy group with targeted political goals. Focusing on JFM’s public press releases, we consider the media logic and rhetorical strategies of the group, which effectively built a case against the state. At the core of the discussion is the balance between the instrumental and constitutive functions of the organization’s messaging.

Open Access November 10, 2022

Social media, social unfreedom

João C. Magalhães, Jun Yu

Page range: 553-571

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Abstract

This essay addresses the moral nature of corporate social media platforms through the lenses of Axel Honneth’s concept of justice, according to which relations of mutual recognition must be institutionalized into spheres of social freedom to claim a just society. This perspective allows us to observe how platforms configure a symmetrically inverted form of ethical sphere, in which users are led to formulate non-autonomous desires that can only be realized socially. We characterize this as social unfreedom. A just platform ought to be the one in which rights and self-legislation capabilities enable users to have a stake in governing how these digital spaces can be designed to foster the practical realization of users’ autonomous aims, the essay argues.

Open Access July 14, 2022

Playful recognition: Television comedy and the politics of mediated recognition

John Magnus Dahl, Torgeir Uberg Nærland

Page range: 572-589

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Abstract

This article explores how media content may facilitate processes of recognition through playfulness and comedy. Mediated recognition is typically understood as a matter of respectful and positive representation of subaltern groups and in terms of struggles for visibility and dignity. Yet at the same time, the media address audiences in much less deferential ways that are nonetheless consequential to processes of recognition: by means of playfulness, subversion, and irreverence. This article introduces the concept of ‘playful recognition’ to account for the contradictory ways in which humor can incite recognition. The article empirically illustrates this concept drawing upon a case study of Svart Humor – a comedy show aired in Norway. On the one hand, this article explores an important yet neglected dimension of mediated recognition, on the other, it introduces a recognition perspective to the study of televised comedy.

Publicly Available November 11, 2022

Furries, freestylers, and the engine of social change: The struggle for recognition in a mediatized world

Leif Hemming Pedersen

Page range: 590-609

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Abstract

This article merges the ‘terminologies of social change’ from recognition theory and mediatization research to argue that the mediatization of society has eased and accelerated processes of what recognition theorist Axel Honneth calls individualization and social inclusion. This, however, cannot be understood unambiguously as moral progress. Thus, the first part of the article outlines the conceptualization of social change in Honneth’s recognition-theoretical framework, including the critique of recognition theory’s account of power, which problematizes Honneth’s inherent idea of moral progress. Considering this critique, the article follows Douglas Giles’ suggestion that we must distinguish between affirmational and transformational struggles for recognition. The discussion is subsequently related to the conceptualization of social change in mediatization research, which shows that the closely interrelated phenomena of a social relocation of media and a re-orientation of the self help facilitate and constitute the individual’s increased possibilities, but also dependence, with respect to intersubjective recognition from peer groups in many contemporary societies. This provides the starting point for exemplifying how the conditions for affirmational and transformational recognition struggles, and thus individualization and social inclusion, have changed in a mediatized world. This exemplification draws primarily on an in-depth case study of mediated recognition in the lives of four young Danes aged 15 to 30 years with different subcultural identity positions. The main empirical illustrations involve the experiences of the 22-year-old hijabi football freestyler Maarika, who uses her Muslim identity actively on her social media channels to be a role model and to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims and female footballers.

About this journal

Objective
Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research is an established forum for scholarship and academic debate in the field of communication science and research from a European perspective. Communication science is concerned with the investigation of the structure and function of communication processes and their impact on society, social groups and individuals. Communications highlights the concerns of this discipline through the publication of articles, research reports, review essays and book reviews on theoretical and methodological developments considered from a European perspective. The journal encompasses the entire field of communication science as its domain of interest. The contributions published in the journal cover a wide range of subfields in communication science.

Topics

Communication reseach
Structure and function of communication
Impact on society, social groups and individuals
Interpersonal communication
Intercultural communication
Mass communication
Communication theory
Philosophy of communication
Media history
Media development and communication technology

Article formats
Original articles, research reports, review essays, and book reviews

Volume 47 Issue 4 - Special Issue: Mediated recognition: Identity, respect, and social justice in a changing media environment Guest Editors: Olivier Driessens and Torgeir Uberg Nærland

Issue of Communications

Titelseiten

Mediated recognition: Identity, respect, and social justice in a changing media environment

From mediated to datafied recognition: The role of social media news feeds

Abstract

Mediated recognition in campaigns for justice: The case of the Magdalene laundry survivors

Abstract

Social media, social unfreedom

Abstract

Playful recognition: Television comedy and the politics of mediated recognition

Abstract

Furries, freestylers, and the engine of social change: The struggle for recognition in a mediatized world

Abstract