ComAI at ICA 2025: Critical Perspectives on Communicative AI and Society

On June 13, 2025, as part of the International Communication Association (ICA) conference in Denver, a panel entitled “Critical Perspectives on Communicative AI and Society: Imaginaries, Data Infrastructures, Democracy, Silence and Automated Markets”took place. The panel provided a platform for leading scholars to discuss key challenges in dealing with communicative AI from a social theory perspective.

From the perspective of the ComAI research group, the contribution of ZeMKI member professor Dr Andreas Hepp deserves particular mention. Hepp analyzed the role of pioneer communities in the emergence of societal imaginaries of communicative AI. He showed how these communities – from the Whole Earth Network to more recent networks such as Hacks/Hackers or Reboot – brought visionary concepts of communicative AI into public discourse, shaping our imaginaries of digital futures to this day.

In addition to Hepp, the following scholars presented:

• Nick Couldry (LSE), with an analysis of communicative AI in the context of data colonialism and the appropriation of knowledge,
• Giovanna Mascheroni, Simone Tosoni, and Fausto Colombo (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore), with a study on the opportunities and limitations of communicative AI in democratic discourse,
• and Göran Bolin (Södertörn University, also chair of the panel), with a critical reflection on the role of communicative AI in the expansion of automated markets and its influence on societal valuation practices.

The panel highlighted the importance of critical social science research for understanding communicative AI and its societal implications – a central concern of the ComAI research group.