Speaker: Prof Christian Katzenbach, Professor of Media and Communication at ZeMKI, University of Bremen
Automation, AI and algorithmic governance are everywhere, it seems. Hardly anything can withstand their allure. The substitution of manual processes and cognitive procedures by machine operations promises to obliviate tiresome and dangerous tasks, and to become a solution to key societal problems. What is less visible, though, is that automation and algorithmic governance have a long-standing history and are already deeply entrenched with social problems and power inequalities.
In this talk, Christian Katzenbach will offer an understanding of algorithmic governance that works against the routine primacy of the technological, and instead integrates discursive, normative, and technological perspectives into a more complex picture. Discourses play a key role in building up the allure and apparent necessity of algorithms and AI, positing them as solutions to social problems. But discourses can also contribute to resisting and refraining from such developments. From a normative and regulative perspective, automation and algorithmic governance are part and parcel of a complex set-up of rules and normative infrastructures that govern our lives in ever-more digitalised societies. And of course, the technological dimension may not be ignored, constituting infrastructures that are in principle quite malleable but result in rigid structures loaded with institutional and economic power once established.
The talk will illustrate this concept with a view to algorithmic content moderation on social media platforms, but will also to speak to ramifications beyond this case. A key principle to be addressed is the role of agency and its complex entanglement between machines and humans on the individual level, but also between different groups and stakeholders, institutions, and infrastructure on the societal level.
Prof Christian Katzenbach is Professor of Media and Communication at ZeMKI, University of Bremen where he directs the Lab Platform Governance, Media, and Technology (PGMT) and the MA Study Programme Digital Media and Society. In 2024, he was a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. His research addresses the formation of platforms and their governance, the discursive and political shaping of “Artificial Intelligence” (AI), and the increasing automation of communication.