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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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- Communicative AI (3)
- Mediatization (3)
- Alexa (1)
- Artificial Intelligence (1)
- Automation (1)
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- ChatGPT (1)
- Children (1)
- Communication (1)
- Companion chatbots (1)
- Content moderation (1)
- Conversational agents (1)
- Deep mediatization (1)
- Families (1)
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- Human-machine communication (1)
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- Large Language Models (1)
- Meaning-making (1)
- Media theory (1)
- News (1)
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- Smart speakers (1)
- Technological fix (1)
- Technology (1)
- Virtual assistants (1)
- Voice-based assistants (1)
Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Human-Machine Communication: Complete Volume. Volume 7 Special Issue: Mediatization
Human-Machine Communication: Complete Volume. Volume 7 Special Issue: Mediatization
Human-Machine Communication
This is the complete volume of HMC Volume 7. Special Issue on Mediatization
The Perturbing Mediatization Of Voice-Based Virtual Assistants: The Case Of Alexa, Leopoldina Fortunati, Autumn P. Edwards, Chad Edwards
The Perturbing Mediatization Of Voice-Based Virtual Assistants: The Case Of Alexa, Leopoldina Fortunati, Autumn P. Edwards, Chad Edwards
Human-Machine Communication
This study examines the role of voice-based assistants (VBAs), specifically Alexa, in the mediatization paradigm framework. The authors hypothesize that emerging technologies such as chatbots and VBAs intensify the process of online meta-reintermediation of news. Three research questions were investigated through a questionnaire administered to 655 university students in the US and Italy: Do participants try to get news from Alexa? Are participants aware that VBAs represent a case of meta-reintermediation of news? Does Alexa contribute to the potential hybridization of news, information, and knowledge? The analysis of 451 open-ended answers showed that only a fraction of participants searches for …
Artificial Sociality, Simone Natale, Iliana Depounti
Artificial Sociality, Simone Natale, Iliana Depounti
Human-Machine Communication
This article proposes the notion of Artificial Sociality to describe communicative AI technologies that create the impression of social behavior. Existing tools that activate Artificial Sociality include, among others, Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, voice assistants, virtual influencers, socialbots and companion chatbots such as Replika. The article highlights three key issues that are likely to shape present and future debates about these technologies, as well as design practices and regulation efforts: the modelling of human sociality that foregrounds it, the problem of deception and the issue of control from the part of the users. Ethical, social and cultural …
Communicative Ai And Techno-Semiotic Mediatization: Understanding The Communicative Role Of The Machine, Göran Bolin
Communicative Ai And Techno-Semiotic Mediatization: Understanding The Communicative Role Of The Machine, Göran Bolin
Human-Machine Communication
Mediatization discourse has so far mainly been centered on media from institutional or social-constructionist approaches. The technological developments within communications industries coupled with the wider societal process of datafication might, however, beg for dusting off the smaller, although the long-time existing, technological approach to mediatization as a complement to the two other approaches, in order to understand aspects of automation and human-machine communication. This theoretical article explores how existing mediatization approaches can refocus to include lessons learned from human-machine communication. The first section accounts for the main mediatization approaches. The second section discusses debates on communication, artificiality, and meaning-making. The …
A New Family Member Or Just Another Digital Interface? Smart Speakers In The Lives Of Families With Young Children, Giovanna Mascheroni
A New Family Member Or Just Another Digital Interface? Smart Speakers In The Lives Of Families With Young Children, Giovanna Mascheroni
Human-Machine Communication
Based on longitudinal qualitative research involving twenty families with at least one child aged eight or younger, the article provides an account of how families, as distinctive communicative figurations, adopt, use and make sense of smart speakers through diverse socially situated practices. Findings show that parents and children enter in a communicative relationship with smart speakers based on their attribution of human-like or machine-like traits to the device, and the device response to their expectations. Moreover, engaging in communicative practices through and with smart speakers, family members subvert or reinforce existing power relations. However, smart speakers acquire new agency by …
Smoothing Out Smart Tech’S Rough Edges: Imperfect Automation And The Human Fix, Christian Katzenbach, Christian Pentzold, Paloma Viejo Otero
Smoothing Out Smart Tech’S Rough Edges: Imperfect Automation And The Human Fix, Christian Katzenbach, Christian Pentzold, Paloma Viejo Otero
Human-Machine Communication
In this article, we take issue with an idea of autonomous and efficient automation that is upheld through the paradoxical conjunction of a flawed vision of the technological fix and the under-acknowledged human work required to fill in the gaps between machines and users. Our argument is based on two case studies that sit at opposite tails of automation processes: the front end of self-service checkouts and the back end of content moderation. This juxtaposition allows us to surface three themes on how the hype around automation is enabled by human interventions: the ad-hoc sociality in situated practices of automation, …
Mediatization And Human-Machine Communication: Trajectories, Discussions, Perspectives, Andreas Hepp, Göran Bolin, Andrea L. Guzman, Wiebke Loosen
Mediatization And Human-Machine Communication: Trajectories, Discussions, Perspectives, Andreas Hepp, Göran Bolin, Andrea L. Guzman, Wiebke Loosen
Human-Machine Communication
As research fields, mediatization and Human-Machine Communication (HMC) have distinct historical trajectories. While mediatization research is concerned with the fundamental interrelation between the transformation of media and communications and cultural and societal changes, the much younger field of HMC delves into human meaning-making in interactions with machines. However, the recent wave of “deep mediatization,” characterized by an increasing emphasis on general communicative automation and the rise of communicative AI, highlights a shared interest in technology’s role within human interaction. This introductory article examines the trajectories of both fields, demonstrating how mediatization research “zooms out” from overarching questions of societal and …