“AI will fix this” – The Technical, Discursive, and Political Turn to AI in Governing Communication

Katzenbach, Christian

doi:10.1177/20539517211046182

Cited by 20 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 32 publications

(31 reference statements)

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“…Contemporary mobilisations of the term shadow banning differ in meaningful ways from the term's original referent, reflecting trends towards using algorithms and AI in platform governance and content moderation (see Katzenbach, 2021). Indeed, shadow banning had initially nothing to do with algorithms or automated content moderation.…”

Section: What Is Known About Shadow Banning?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The shadow banning controversy: perceived governance and algorithmic folklore

Savolainen

2022

Media, Culture & Society

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In this paper, I approach platform governance through algorithmic folklore, consisting of beliefs and narratives about moderation systems that are passed on informally and can exist in tension with official accounts. More specifically, I analyse user discussions on ‘shadow banning’, a controversial, potentially non-existing form of content moderation on popular social media platforms. I argue that discursive mobilisations of the term can act as a methodological entry point to studying the shifting grounds and emerging logics of algorithmic governance, not necessarily in terms of the actual practices themselves, but in terms of its experiential dimension that, in turn, indicates broader modalities and relationalities of control. Based on my analysis of the user discussions, I argue that the constitutive logics of social media platforms increasingly seem to run counter to the values of good governance, such as clarity and stability of norms, and consistency of enforcement. This is reflected in how users struggle, desperately, to form expectations about system operation and police themselves according to perceived rules, yet are left in a state of dependency and frustration, unable to take hold of their digital futures.

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Section: What Is Known About Shadow Banning?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The shadow banning controversy: perceived governance and algorithmic folklore

Savolainen

2022

Media, Culture & Society

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“…These techno-food future imaginaries entail sweeping narratives of solutionism and ‘technological fixes’, where technological innovations are presented as solutions to social and ecological crises, promising new eras of prosperity, freedom, and equality (e.g. Huesemann and Huesemann 2011 ; Johnston 2018 ; Katzenbach 2021 ). This techno-fix, the strong faith that technology adaption and entrepreneurialism will act as ‘saviors’, as necessary and functional solutions for social, political, and cultural problems, represents a major narrative throughout the agri-food tech discourse.…”

Section: Constructing Food For Financementioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing agri-food for finance: startups, venture capital and food future imaginaries

Sippel

Dolinga

2022

Agric Hum Values

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Over the past decade, investments in agricultural and food technology startups have grown to previously unknown dimensions. Mushrooming agri-food tech startups that promise to solve critical issues in the agri-food system through technological innovation are increasingly perceived as an attractive new investment opportunity for venture capitalists and investors. This paper investigates how digital agri-food technologies are narrated, constructed, and promoted for financial investment. Through qualitative content analysis of agri-food tech industry reports, articles, and commentaries we trace the logic, rationales, and narratives of this most recent investment rush, and reveal its immanent techno-finance fixes. We conceptualize the agri-food imaginaries produced within the agri-food tech discourse as financialized imaginaries, and argue that they are specifically tailored to construct, incentivize, and legitimize this new agri-food tech space for financial investment. In their attempt to raise money from investors, venture capital firms further fuel this development by discursively creating an ‘agri-food tech investment rush’—similar to the land and gold rushes of the past. Investments in agri-food tech startups, however, are presented to investors as both a profitable investment opportunity as well as a moral obligation, allowing for food production to cope with neo-malthusian and environmental threats. This paper contributes to our understanding of digitization as a socio-technical project, which includes the active envisioning and promotion of desirable agri-food futures.

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“…In other words, API is also a material object that is constructed with assumptions, beliefs, judgements, organising social orders and operating as culture machines (Finn, 2017) in a border sense. Scholars who research on technologies use specifically the notions of 'discursive turn to AI' (Katzenbach, 2021) and 'discursive formations' (Bucher, 2013) to questioning the representation of certain AI/API knowledge and their technical neutrality.…”

Section: Apis As Technical-discursive Objectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

(De)constructing Machines as Critical Technical Practice

Velasco¹,

Soon²

2022

Preprint

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This paper discusses the role of technology under the framework of Critical Technical Practice specifically in the form of constructing artefacts and deconstructing tools in order to produce what Philip Agre would describe as “reflexive work of critique” (Agre, 1997). By presenting the activities and methods used in the teaching and shaping of undergraduate courses, this paper aims to show how technical objects, such as data, datasets, application programming interfaces and machine learning models, can be considered as discursive subjects, demonstrating pedagogical understanding across fields. The courses operate in the humanities tradition and take critical technical practice as a didactic approach, insofar as software and data are understood and manipulated on an instrumental level, while encouraging critical engagement and embodied reflection that bridge the technical and social/cultural domains. Within this pedagogical approach, critical is not only understood as a paradigm of rationality or quantitative, data-driven argumentation, but as adopting a critical position –i.e. to research and reflect on the social structures and cultural phenomena entangled with digital objects, bodies, tools, methods and software production. By embracing work-in-progress and reflexive exploration, we aim to extend the notion of critical technical practice by unfolding how (de)constructing machines can be achieved beyond thinking of technology as neutral instrumentalisation. The challenge is how to find a balance, not only as researchers but as educators, unfolding aspects of both formality and functionality as well as questioning and understanding technology at a discursive and critical level. We argue that learning technical practice in an educational setting is not an end, but rather a means to question existing technological structures and create further changes in socio-technical systems.

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“AI will fix this” – The Technical, Discursive, and Political Turn to AI in Governing Communication

Cited by 20 publications

References 32 publications

The shadow banning controversy: perceived governance and algorithmic folklore

The shadow banning controversy: perceived governance and algorithmic folklore

Constructing agri-food for finance: startups, venture capital and food future imaginaries

(De)constructing Machines as Critical Technical Practice

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