ComAI-Lectures

Abstract: Shared matters of concern are fundamental to democratic life. Publics do not simply exist; they form around problems, controversies and consequences that come to matter. As Marres succinctly puts it: “no issue, no public.” But what happens when the conditions under which issues become visible, relevant and shared are increasingly organised by artificial intelligence?

Abstract: Can a robot teach a class? Can a chatbot earn a student's trust? For over a decade, our research has put machines in the teacher's chair: a bot answering health questions on Twitter, a telepresence robot delivering a business lecture, an AI voice judged against student assumptions about age and wisdom, a robotic pet keeping isolated college students company. Again, students rate these machine instructors as credible, and real learning happens, even when a human teacher still edges them out. Voice, appearance, and a machine's perceived age all shape how much students trust it. These findings raise a natural question: does the same hold outside the laboratory?

Abstract: In this talk, I describe and contextualize so-called "AI" by addressing, then quickly moving on from, its origins, technological underpinnings and specificities and turn to its deployment and rhetorical social and political dimensions and functions. For that, I introduce the metaphor of "the hydra" (from the mythical Hydra of Lerna), a multi-faceted beast whose head regrew as soon as another was severed from its body, always showing a different face and a seemingly indefatigable shapshifter.

Abstract: In this presentation, I introduce and develop the concept of boutique media to describe small-scale, personality-driven and affectively charged forms of journalism emerging in the wake of the decline of industrial news production. The presentation examines how journalists and other news creators respond to the reconfiguration of trust and authority in an era of “post-industrial” news production, in which social media platforms governed by algorithms have become the primary intermediaries for news.

This talk discusses how data donation infrastructures can be used to study political behaviour on social media platforms. It introduces data donation as a way to access user-centric traces of political information exposure and engagement that are otherwise difficult to obtain, and reflects on key conceptual and methodological challenges such as sampling, validity, and ethics. Drawing on ongoing work, the presentation outlines how donated platform data can be linked to survey measures of attitudes and behaviour, and sketches opportunities for future collaborative projects in the broader field of political communication and platform research.

Abstract This presentation examines worker-led AI governance, understood as the collective ability of workers, through unions, cooperatives, grassroots collectives, and social movements, to shape how AI is used, managed, deployed, negotiated, or refused at work. Grounded in ongoing empirical research with cultural workers across the Americas, the talk analyzes one specific dimension of worker-led AI (…)

Abstract One of the paradoxes of AI is that it is a global phenomenon, but at the same time, it is always situated in specific, local contexts and cultures. While approaches that aim to study local cultures of AI are important, there is the risk of neglecting their insertion within the broader geographies and politics (…)

Abstract Generative AI has become a significant trend in visualization research and practice since the release of ChatGPT in 2022. Despite this, we do not know enough about how visualization professionals are actually using Generative AI, its benefits, and disadvantages. In this talk, I will present a series of projects that illustrate the current advances (…)