Do social networks help social recognition?

Chaumet Louis

Media Theory : Exo 2

Do social networks help social recognition?

Traditionally, in the humanities and social sciences, the term social network refers to an arrangement of links between individuals or organisations, constituting a meaningful grouping: family, colleagues, a group of friends, a community, etc. However, since the explosion of the internet, the term "social network" in common usage generally refers to "social media", which covers the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction between individuals or groups of individuals, and content creation. On the other hand, let's talk about the notion of social recognition. The latter could be defined as a process of identification where each member of the group looks at the other member. In other words, we will try to understand in this paper, in what ways social networks allow each individual to improve their social recognition, while presenting certain limits.

Hegel called recognition the intersubjective process of two subjectivities meeting and recognising each other. Nowadays, however, encounters are much easier to achieve thanks to the emergence of social networks. First of all, reconnecting with old friends can lead to the discovery of new ones. If I have an old friend that I have known since I was a kid, but unfortunately I lost contact with her. One day, I found her on a website, and we immediately agreed to meet again soon, and why not with other friends. I then met new people with whom I still have a lot of contact. Our parents' generation was really affected by this phenomenon, in their time, the only way to keep in touch with someone was to keep seeing them. And with the advent of Facebook, it's like having a giant calendar that allows you to find anyone with a single click.

Social recognition is one of the key notions of the American psychologist Abraham Maslow. Through his pyramid of needs, Maslow tries to explain that the motivations of human beings arise from needs to be satisfied, which are hierarchically divided into 5 levels. First of all, physiological needs: sleeping, eating, drinking, dressing, etc. Security needs: elements of stability and protection. Then, the needs for self-fulfilment: to realise oneself, to blossom, to develop oneself personally (with meditation for example). Finally, the need to belong: integration into a group, social status, and the need for esteem, i.e. to be recognised, to be loved, to be accepted by others. It is the last two in particular that interest us here. In fact, social networks nowadays make it increasingly possible to become part of a group, and thus to fulfil the need to belong. Someone who has a passion for football, and in particular for a club such as Liverpool, for example, will be able to find many people like him thanks to social networks, and together they will be able to found a group of supporters, who will meet in the future. The need to belong, combined with the need for esteem, which usually comes afterwards, leads to a certain social recognition for each individual.

Let's take a concrete example, which however moves away from the media approach of the term "social network" and returns this time to a much more anthropological approach. In the film L'enfant sauvage, based on the adaptation of the report Mémoires by Victor de l'Aveyron. L'Enfant sauvage is the story of a child, captured like an animal in 1800 in Aveyron by peasants. He was first used as a fairground animal, then brought to Dr Itard at the National Institute for the Deaf and Dumb in Paris. The wild child seems to be deaf and dumb. The scientific world, of which Philippe Pinel was a part, considered him to be retarded and therefore abandoned. He has therefore not been socialised, not 'tamed' as it were. We can therefore consider that a "wild child" is a child who has grown up outside any social group, who has not been socialised, and who therefore faces a lack of social recognition. From a certain point of view, social networks are therefore important to develop a certain social recognition.

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