Conclusion

Abstract

In the Introduction, I stated that a recognition-theoretical approach provides sound social and political guidelines for empirical research. In this book, my collaborators and I have endeavored to show that identity-building and the expansion of relations of recognition or misrecognition in contemporary, complex, multicultural societies are played out to a large degree through processes of technological mediation. I argued that the media plays an important role in conflicts that emerge from individuals and groups’ claims for needs, rights or achievements, and the nature of social response. In addition, the media is crucial for the constitution of debates in the public sphere, as well as for dynamics of mobilization and social learning as a social-wide process. In this section I summarize major findings of our study, considering the inter-play between insights of the theory of recognition and our empirical research.