ABSTRACT
The final chapter offers guidelines for the reapplication of our digital hermeneutic approach in a variety of online contexts and case studies. We argue that hermeneutics can and should play a crucial role in digital humanities and literary and media studies today, that the hermeneutics of suspicion and the hermeneutics of trust can be used as lenses to examine online dynamics, especially on social media, and that dialogical hermeneutics can be seen as a productive response to excessive suspicion and excessive faith online. After summing up the main findings and conclusions per chapter, we provide a number of further questions based on our data; we briefly discuss how science communication and education on all levels could benefit from the insights of hermeneutic research, especially regarding the value of dialogue for forging trusting relationships with society. We end by offering three suggestions of case studies for further application, which can be used in academic educational contexts like undergraduate courses: Jordan Peterson and interpretative charity, Taylor Swift’s fandom, and AI Images. Adapted this way, hermeneutics could play a crucial role in digital humanities and media studies today.
