CALL FOR PAPER
Theorizing AI: Multidisciplinary Framework of AI Research
人工智能理论化：人工智能研究的跨学科框架
Dr. Fen Lin
City University of Hong Kong
Dr. Zhao Alexander Huang
Université Paris Nanterre
Dr. Jian Lin
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its generative tools, such as various chatbots, including ChatGPT, have quickly become integral to our daily interactions, permeating communication, work, and lifestyle scenarios (Crawford, 2021; Kang & Lou, 2022). AI’s algorithms and computational processes exert a subtle and invisible influence on digital communication and mediatization. AI adoption not only involves constructing and disseminating knowledge and identity-building models within digital communication but also heralds a new kind of agency (Russell & Norvig, 2016, p. 4). Dehnert and Mongeau (2022) contend that the persuasion-based production by communication AI encompasses a series of symbolic processes that create and refine messages before delivering them to human recipients. Two notable processes are “Human–AI Interaction” and “Human–Computer Interaction” (Sundar & Lee, 2022, p. 381). The former encompasses both input and output in AI use, while the latter pertains to AI’s role in generating information and facilitating human interaction. Through algorithms, automated scanning and storage, machine learning, natural language processing, and other technologies, AI is evolving into a communication agent, participating in interpersonal exchanges based on operational assumptions, scenarios, and rules established by its algorithm or designers, thus shaping users’ information acquisition and decision-making.
Recent high-profile personnel changes at OpenAI have propelled this already prominent technology to new public interest levels. Despite AI’s rapid advancement, it has introduced myriad challenges; the agency enabled by AI technology has profoundly and extensively infiltrated our communicative processes and daily lives, eliciting urgent concerns about ethical dilemmas, privacy risks, automation’s impact on labor, environmental effects, and the nature of human-machine interactions (Hermann, 2022; Gunkel, 2012; West, 2018; Crawford, 2021). Amid diverse business, technical, and ethical discourses on AI (Guzman, 2018), how can we meld multiple disciplines to forge a comprehensive theoretical understanding of AI technologies and their societal, political, and cultural repercussions, as well as address the methodological challenges AI-aided communication research may encounter (Burrell & Fourcade, 2021)?
This special issue invites interdisciplinary explorations into these questions and seeks to unearth central issues and future prospects of critical AI research. We encourage submissions that not only theorize the technical, political, and cultural logics of AI as emerging technologies but also situate them within the specific fabrics of socio-economic contexts. AI (especially emerging Generative AI tools) should not be perceived as detached technical entities but rather as part of the intricate interplay between humans, organizations, and the broader environment.
In particular, this proposed special issue at Communication and the Public (CAP), a Scopus-indexed journal, invites authors to contribute multi-disciplinary perspectives on theorizing AI. We will accept manuscripts in two formats: conceptual paper (3,000–4,000 words) or full-length papers (up to 9,000 words).
Contributors are welcome to submit manuscripts on the following related topics:
What are the central issues in AI research?
How should we draw from different disciplines to study AI and its social, cultural, and political implications?
What does the emergence of Generative AI tools mean for media, communication, and culture?
How is the application of these technologies embedded in the existing political-economic relations across the globe?
How can we address the methodological challenges brought by the black-box nature of decision-making through machine learning and AI automation?
What ethical challenges does the advancement of AI pose for governance at domestic, regional, and international levels?
How does AI advancement impact governance frameworks, and what strategies can be implemented to address these issues across these varying scales?
In what ways does the advancement of AI contribute to the technology divide, particularly between the Global South and North, and what measures can be taken to mitigate this growing disparity?
Specific Plans:
The submission to this special issue will go through a fast-track review. The qualified manuscripts will be published in CAP online first on a rolling process.
The specific timeline is:
Extended abstracts: May 15, 2024
Potential contributors are expected to submit an extended abstract (no more than 800 words) no later than May 15, 2024. The abstract should include the primary literature, data, analytical methods, and preliminary conclusions, if applicable.
Contributors should email the extended abstract to the journal’s official email (communication-public@zju.edu.cn )and to the guest editors’ emails (capfenlin@gmail.com; zhao.huang@parisnanterre.fr; antlinjian@gmail.com ).Please also include the contributors’ biographic information and the corresponding authors’ contact information.
Full draft invitations and rejection notifications: within two weeks
The guest editors and the CAP editors will assess the extended abstracts. The authors will be informed of comments or suggestions within two weeks, including the acceptance or rejection.
Complete paper submission: July 15, 2024
The full publication is expected no later than July 15, 2024. Please indicate that the submission is for a special issue on the online system. For detail submission guideline, please visit https://journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/CTP.
Selected contributors will also be invited to participate in our 2024 Annual Conference of International Communication Association panel in Gold Coast, Australia.
Please be aware that the acceptance of abstracts doesn’t guarantee paper acceptance. All submissions will go through a thorough double-blind review process.
Special Issue Publication: The online version starts in October, 2024
The special issue will publish the accepted manuscripts online starting mid-October 2024.
Reference
Burrell, J., & Fourcade, M. (2021). The society of algorithms. Annual Review of Sociology, 47, 213-237.
Crawford, K. (2021). The atlas of AI: Power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence. Yale University Press.
Dehnert, M., & Mongeau, P. A. (2022). Persuasion in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI): Theories and Complications of AI-Based Persuasion. Human Communication Research, 48(3), 386–403. https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqac006
Gunkel, D. J. (2012). Communication and artificial intelligence: Opportunities and challenges for the 21st century. communication+ 1, 1(1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.7275/R5QJ7F7R
Guzman, A. L. (2018). Beyond Extraordinary: Theorizing Artificial Intelligence and the Self in Daily Life. In Z. Papacharissi (Eds.), A Networked Self and Human Augmentics, Artificial Intelligence, Sentience (pp. 83–96). New York: Routledge.
Hermann, E. (2022). Artificial intelligence and mass personalization of communication content—An ethical and literacy perspective. New Media & Society, 24(5), 1258-1277. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211022702
Kang, H., & Lou, C. (2022). AI agency vs. human agency: understanding human–AI interactions on TikTok and their implications for user engagement. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 27(5), zmac014, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmac014
Russell, S., & Norvig, P. (2016). Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Global Edition (3e édition). Pearson.
Sundar, S. S., & Lee, E.-J. (2022). Rethinking Communication in the Era of Artificial Intelligence. Human Communication Research, 48(3), 379–385. https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqac014
West, D. M. (2018). The future of work: Robots, AI, and automation. Brookings Institution Press.
