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Science and Technology Studies Commons™
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- Human-Machine Communication (3)
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Articles 1 - 15 of 15
Full-Text Articles in Science and Technology Studies
Unexpected Encounters With Spot In The Wild: Sensemaking As Communicative Boundary Work With Robots, Annette Markham, Constanze M. Leeb, Brooke Ann Coco, Daniel Kirby, Lu Liu, Edoardo Lomi, Lucy Thornton, Kelly Ka-Lai Chan, Bradley R. Crammond
Unexpected Encounters With Spot In The Wild: Sensemaking As Communicative Boundary Work With Robots, Annette Markham, Constanze M. Leeb, Brooke Ann Coco, Daniel Kirby, Lu Liu, Edoardo Lomi, Lucy Thornton, Kelly Ka-Lai Chan, Bradley R. Crammond
Human-Machine Communication
As near-autonomous and AI-embedded robots continue to appear in public settings, their sociality and interactivity is a critical part of the social fabric. This article presents emerging themes from a large-scale ethnographic study of granular-level public interactions between more than 400 people who have an unexpected encounter with Boston Dynamics’ robot “Spot” in a public square in Melbourne. Conceptualizing Spot as a boundary object enables us to highlight patterns of sensemaking as people grapple with ontological disruptions through micro-level interactions; within the self, with other people, or between the self and the robot. Based on thematic analysis of multimedia data …
Two Years To Madness: A 30-Month Journal Of Human–Machine Communication And Second-Hand Reality, Andrew Prahl
Two Years To Madness: A 30-Month Journal Of Human–Machine Communication And Second-Hand Reality, Andrew Prahl
Human-Machine Communication
Drawing on a 30-month analytic-autoethnography of the first author’s journal as an earlyaccess OpenAI user, this study examines how sustained communication with generative AI affects everyday lived experience and identity. Inductive content analysis of 166 entries by independent coders is followed by theory-driven coding with the extended-mind and sensemaking frameworks. Three interlocking themes emerge. Enabled and Degraded captures the tension between new capabilities and efficiency versus creeping skill atrophy. Scary New World charts rising anxiety as productivity gains erode competitive and relational distinctiveness. The findings also show a growing, pervasive doubt about the human authorship of texts, images, and other …
Machine Credibility: How News Readers Evaluate Ai-Generated Content, Alexander Wasdahl
Machine Credibility: How News Readers Evaluate Ai-Generated Content, Alexander Wasdahl
Human-Machine Communication
The advent of AI-generated news as a novel form of content demands renewed attention toward modes of understanding reader perceptions. This research sought to answer: What are the evaluative criteria used by readers in their perception of automated news content generated via natural language processing? A series of exploratory factor analyses (EFA) was conducted on results of a survey using items obtained in an initial survey phase to uncover underlying factors contributing to differences in reader article rankings. When compared with the results of factor analyses for human-generated news content, the findings offer new constellations of terms that reflect the …
Generative Ai: Another Chapter Of Human-Machine Communication, Seungahn Nah, Patric R. Spence
Generative Ai: Another Chapter Of Human-Machine Communication, Seungahn Nah, Patric R. Spence
Human-Machine Communication
This editorial introduces a special issue of Human-Machine Communication that explores how generative AI reshapes the communicative relationship between humans and machines. It highlights emerging research on technology use, education, interpersonal dynamics, and trust in AI-generated content, emphasizing that generative AI’s significance lies not in novelty but in the social negotiations it provokes around meaning, authority, and credibility.
Transformations And Revelations: The Communicative Constitution Of Trustworthiness And Trust Through Ai Development Practices, Tessa Bruijne, Anouk Mols, Jason Pridmore
Transformations And Revelations: The Communicative Constitution Of Trustworthiness And Trust Through Ai Development Practices, Tessa Bruijne, Anouk Mols, Jason Pridmore
Human-Machine Communication
This study explores AI development practices to understand how trustworthiness is built into AI systems, and how this generates trust in AI. Through a multi-sited ethnography based methodology, we analyze observations, interviews, and documentation from AI developers working on trustworthy AI. Our analysis shows two key practices: transformation and revelation. Through transformational AI development practices trustworthiness is (re)constituted, though more or lesser degrees. Through revelation practices, AI developers communicatively engage with others to generate trust. This focus on developers adds to the user-centric perspective and shows the role nontechnical development practices have in shaping trust and trustworthy AI before it …
Accomplishing Robotic Autonomy: The Complexities Of Sociotechnical Care And Agency In The Laboratory, Yifan Xu, Elliott Hauser
Accomplishing Robotic Autonomy: The Complexities Of Sociotechnical Care And Agency In The Laboratory, Yifan Xu, Elliott Hauser
Human-Machine Communication
Effective ethical interventions in emerging technologies such as robotic autonomy demand situated understandings of the practices that shape them. Drawing upon a year of participatory ethnography, this study examines the sociomaterial practices used to accomplish robotic agency in an engineering research laboratory. Ironically, the robot was often a helpless, even pathetic, figure. Roboticists displayed an attitude of surprisingly genuine, diligent, and self-effacing care toward the robot as they helped enable it to perform basic competencies such as picking up a bottle. Using a practice theory, we show how roboticists’ care practices, motivated and sustained by anticipatory narratives of robotic agency, …
Rethinking Autonomy In The Digital Age: Between Human Exceptionalism, Hybridity And Conviviality, Anne Hoss
Rethinking Autonomy In The Digital Age: Between Human Exceptionalism, Hybridity And Conviviality, Anne Hoss
Human-Machine Communication
In the humanities and social sciences, there is a long tradition of discourses on the relationship between automats and human autonomy. Socio-technological transformation processes of the past decades have revitalized related discussions. At the same time, based on ideas of either human exceptionalism or hybridity, current debates tend to focus on ontological questions and comparisons between humans and machines. This paper aims to widen recent discursive foci by introducing Ivan Illich’s work which highlights institutions, power structures, and the social shaping of technology as key factors of humanartifact relations and autonomous action. It will be argued that Illich’s approach contributes …
Machine Ex Machina: A Framework Decentering The Human In Ai Design Praxis, Cait Lackey, Zizi Papacharissi
Machine Ex Machina: A Framework Decentering The Human In Ai Design Praxis, Cait Lackey, Zizi Papacharissi
Human-Machine Communication
Artificial intelligence (AI) design typically incorporates intelligence in a manner that is affirmatory of the superiority of human forms of intelligence. In this paper, we draw from relevant research and theory to propose a social-ecological design praxis of machine inclusivity that rejects the presumption of primacy afforded to human-centered AI. We provide new perspectives for how human-machine communication (HMC) scholarship can be synergistically combined with modern neuroscience’s integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness. We propose an integrated theoretical framework with five design practice recommendations to guide how we might think about responsible and conscious AI environments of the future: symbiotic …
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, …
Valenced Media Effects On Robot-Related Attitudes And Mental Models: A Parasocial Contact Approach, Jan-Philipp Stein, Jaime Banks
Valenced Media Effects On Robot-Related Attitudes And Mental Models: A Parasocial Contact Approach, Jan-Philipp Stein, Jaime Banks
Human-Machine Communication
Despite rapid advancements in robotics, most people still only come into contact with robots via mass media. Consequently, robot-related attitudes are often discussed as the result of habituation and cultivation processes, as they unfold during repeated media exposure. In this paper, we introduce parasocial contact theory to this line of research— arguing that it better acknowledges interpersonal and intergroup dynamics found in modern human–robot interactions. Moreover, conceptualizing mediated robot encounters as parasocial contact integrates both qualitative and quantitative aspects into one comprehensive approach. A multi-method experiment offers empirical support for our arguments: Although many elements of participants’ beliefs and attitudes …
Gender Ambiguity In Voice-Based Assistants: Gender Perception And Influences Of Context, Sandra Mooshammer, Katrin Etzrodt
Gender Ambiguity In Voice-Based Assistants: Gender Perception And Influences Of Context, Sandra Mooshammer, Katrin Etzrodt
Human-Machine Communication
Recently emerging synthetic acoustically gender-ambiguous voices could contribute to dissolving the still prevailing genderism. Yet, are we indeed perceiving these voices as “unassignable”? Or are we trying to assimilate them into existing genders? To investigate the perceived ambiguity, we conducted an explorative 3 (male, female, ambiguous voice) × 3 (male, female, ambiguous topic) experiment. We found that, although participants perceived the gender-ambiguous voice as ambiguous, they used a profoundly wide range of the scale, indicating tendencies toward a gender. We uncovered a mild dissolve of gender roles. Neither the listener’s gender nor the personal gender stereotypes impacted the perception. However, …
Out With The Humans, In With The Machines?: Investigating The Behavioral And Psychological Effects Of Replacing Human Advisors With A Machine, Andrew Prahl, Lyn Van Swol
Out With The Humans, In With The Machines?: Investigating The Behavioral And Psychological Effects Of Replacing Human Advisors With A Machine, Andrew Prahl, Lyn Van Swol
Human-Machine Communication
This study investigates the effects of task demonstrability and replacing a human advisor with a machine advisor. Outcome measures include advice-utilization (trust), the perception of advisors, and decision-maker emotions. Participants were randomly assigned to make a series of forecasts dealing with either humanitarian planning (low demonstrability) or management (high demonstrability). Participants received advice from either a machine advisor only, a human advisor only, or their advisor was replaced with the other type of advisor (human/machine) midway through the experiment. Decision-makers rated human advisors as more expert, more useful, and more similar. Perception effects were strongest when a human advisor was …
Ontological Boundaries Between Humans And Computers And The Implications For Human-Machine Communication, Andrea L. Guzman
Ontological Boundaries Between Humans And Computers And The Implications For Human-Machine Communication, Andrea L. Guzman
Human-Machine Communication
In human-machine communication, people interact with a communication partner that is of a different ontological nature from themselves. This study examines how people conceptualize ontological differences between humans and computers and the implications of these differences for human-machine communication. Findings based on data from qualitative interviews with 73 U.S. adults regarding disembodied artificial intelligence (AI) technologies (voice-based AI assistants, automated-writing software) show that people differentiate between humans and computers based on origin of being, degree of autonomy, status as tool/tool-user, level of intelligence, emotional capabilities, and inherent flaws. In addition, these ontological boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred as technologies emulate …
Toward An Agent-Agnostic Transmission Model: Synthesizing Anthropocentric And Technocentric Paradigms In Communication, Jaime Banks, Maartje M. A. De Graaf
Toward An Agent-Agnostic Transmission Model: Synthesizing Anthropocentric And Technocentric Paradigms In Communication, Jaime Banks, Maartje M. A. De Graaf
Human-Machine Communication
Technological and social evolutions have prompted operational, phenomenological, and ontological shifts in communication processes. These shifts, we argue, trigger the need to regard human and machine roles in communication processes in a more egalitarian fashion. Integrating anthropocentric and technocentric perspectives on communication, we propose an agent-agnostic framework for human-machine communication. This framework rejects exclusive assignment of communicative roles (sender, message, channel, receiver) to traditionally held agents and instead focuses on evaluating agents according to their functions as a means for considering what roles are held in communication processes. As a first step in advancing this agent-agnostic perspective, this theoretical paper …
Opening Space For Theoretical, Methodological, And Empirical Issues In Human-Machine Communication, Leopoldina Fortunati, Autumn P. Edwards
Opening Space For Theoretical, Methodological, And Empirical Issues In Human-Machine Communication, Leopoldina Fortunati, Autumn P. Edwards
Human-Machine Communication
This journal offers a space dedicated to theorizing, researching empirically, and discussing human-machine communication (HMC), a new form of communication with digital interlocutors that has recently developed and has imposed the urgency to be analyzed and understood. There is the need to properly address the model of this specific communication as well as the roles, objectives, functions, experiences, practices, and identities of the interlocutors involved, both human and digital. Reading these seven articles is an advantageous intellectual exercise for entering this new field of research on Human-Machine Communication. The present volume contributes substantially both at theoretical and empirical levels by …