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Recognition

Why analyse recognition and the media? The idea of exploring the concept of recognition in the context of media practices came to me a few years ago, when I was doing research on celebrity culture. I was particularly interested in the emergence of exchanges between celebrities and their followers on digital media platforms, like Twitter and Instagram. During that investigation, it was possible to observe that some celebrities who were active on social media engaged in a kind of ‘economy of intimacy and recognition’ as part of a strategy to motivate their fans to take part in campaigns designed to produce media attention for their idols (Campanella et al., 2018). These celebrities took part in performative demonstrations of affection towards their followers in exchange for their involvement in initiatives such as concerted campaigns with Twitter hashtags, crusades to increase YouTube channel subscriptions and even phone calls to local radio stations to request their treasured artist’s songs. For Baym (2018), the emergence of this type of practice is testament to the mounting pressure on creators and celebrities to perform relational labour.

Practices involving Brazilian funk singer Valesca Popozuda are a good example. During the research I could observe how dedicated she was to replying to fans’ Twitter messages, phoning her most dedicated followers on special occasions – like birthdays – and even taking part in daytrips and barbecues with those who could prove to be most effective in helping her increase her popularity. On one occasion she invited fans to take part in a promotional campaign in which they were asked to post videos and photos of themselves singing her newly released single Beijinho no Ombro on social media. Those getting the most reactions to their posts earned the privilege of spending an entire day with Valesca.

During the investigation fans made clear that the opportunity to establish some kind of direct contact with a ‘media person’ (in this case, Valesca), whether in the form of a mere tweet reply, or a physical encounter, such as a ‘meet & greet’ session, was regarded as very special. One fan declared that Valesca made him feel important every time the two of them interacted. He felt recognized as a person of worth when she responded to his tweets or mentioned him by name. In short, these practices were perceived as a boost to his self-esteem.

In many situations, fans invest considerable emotional, time and financial resources in order to get some kind of recognition from their favourite media personality. Far from mere eccentricity, this type of sentiment just shows how media (or media people, in these cases) play such a distinctive role in the personal experiences encountered in the contemporary world (Couldry, 2012).

There are, of course, a myriad of reasons behind people’s interest in celebrities, as the already relatively established celebrity studies field has demonstrated over the last few decades (see, for example, Braudy, 1986; King, 1987; Gamson, 1994; Marshall, 1997; Dyer, 1998; Rojek, 2001; Driessens, 2013). However, regardless of the individual drives leading to someone’s engagement in celebrity-related practices, the established belief in an almost naturalized value placed on having one’s existence recognized by a celebrity (or by the media) has always intrigued me. The processes responsible for the formation of this moral order are, nonetheless, rather complex. They have broader implications that clearly transcend celebrity culture. These transformations, explored in more detail in the next chapter, are the result of rearrangements in the production of modern subjectivities, connected to the growing role played by media in people’s lives. The phenomenon acquired new hues in the last decade with the expansion of digital media platforms into virtually all aspects of people’s daily life.

As an individual who is not very active in socializing on social media platforms, I experience a certain fear of missing out on new possibilities for establishing social connections. Nowadays, people are expected to communicate aspects of their private and professional lives as well as their stances on a myriad of issues using social media platforms. Public and private spheres are collapsing into a digital social sphere. Those who don’t do it do not enjoy the array of communicative possibilities made available by digital platforms with the purpose of increasing the production of datafied sociality. The recent coronavirus pandemic exacerbated this trend even more as the need for social distancing created an extra incentive for individuals to replace traditional forms of social activity with online ones. There is good evidence, though, that this type of datafied habitus connected to our growing inclination for adopting social media platforms in our everyday socialization is here to stay.2 By datafied habitus, I mean the emotional, psychological and behavioural dispositions needed to perform adequately and actively on data-driven social media platforms as part of the process of identity formation (more on that later). What is truly unique in this novel arrangement is that it represents a moral model that demands the subject’s ability to create a type of social media existence which, in turn, becomes a product to be consumed. The near omnipresence of smartphones, personal digital assistants and digital wearable devices like Fitbits in people’s lives is testament to how our intersubjective relations are being transformed towards a datafied society, i.e. a society in which social relations and daily activities are translated into data, analysed as such, and then monetized. As a consequence, I propose here that processes of intersubjective recognition are also being transformed in their different dimensions.

Before delving into these discussions, however, it is vital to delineate some of the principles connected to recognition theory in an attempt to make sense of the interrelationships between social media, subjectivity and power. The objective is not to provide a comprehensive account of the historical developments of the concept of recognition as this book does not intend to offer a critical reading of such debates. Ultimately, recognition theory is seen here as a toolbox that can help us understand how processes of identity formation and social validation are increasingly connected to the neoliberal logics informing social media platforms.

What do I mean by recognition?

The act of recognizing someone can acquire distinct meanings. The Oxford English Dictionary, for instance, divides the verb ‘to recognize’ into two different groupings: one connected to the operation of identifying or determining; the second linked to the action of acknowledging the existence of someone or something, to give validity. In our discussion here we are interested in the second meaning, as it relates to the idea of giving or denying value to a person or a group of people. Yet, the definition provided by the Oxford Dictionary is still insufficient for us, as it does not elaborate on what or who can be recognized. Moreover, it also does not sufficiently differentiate the terms acknowledging, accepting and recognizing.

In order to present a clear grasp of what exactly Honneth and other academics convey by the concept of recognition, Ikäheimo and Laitinen (2007) offer a more nuanced distinction between these meanings. They suggest a classificatory differentiation between three interconnected terminologies: identification, acknowledgement and recognition.

Ikäheimo and Laitinen (2007) propose that identification applies not only to persons, but actually to anything. Identification can be numerical, of a particular thing; qualitative, displaying singular features; and generic, allotting to a specific group(s). As a particular subcategory, the identification of a person or group of people can be divided into external identification and self-identification. The former involves a move where a second person identifies someone, while the latter entails a self-identification made by the person themself – although, to different degrees, self-identification is always influenced by others (ibid., p. 35). For example, the ‘face recognition’ feature adopted by some smartphones is, in fact, an identification system to verify that the person trying to use the device being held is the real owner of it. The technology uses facial biometrics to detect and locate specific features on someone’s face in order to do that.

Acknowledgement, on the other hand, has a meaning that connects to the recognition of normative ‘entities’ like rules, codes, norms, principles, etc. Someone can acknowledge, for example, that a particular pledge is fair. This is to say that the entities that are acknowledged can be valued as good, authentic, genuine and so forth. Ikäheimo and Laitinen also propose that the recognition of an individual or group of people might be denied if their personhood is not acknowledged. In other words, the authors say that the acknowledgement of a person’s moral status is a precondition for their being recognized. Noble (2009) extends this discussion when he argues that a politics of acknowledgement should be less concerned with questions of identity and more with a kind of ethnography of the encounter. He stresses that the act of acknowledging is not to be confined by strict boundaries, like race and gender, as it should capture the...