ABSTRACT
The pandemic has laid bare our over-reliance on communication. Media technologies are everyday lifelines offering care and solace. AI technologies have simultaneously colonized the very horizon of the future, as they seem to offer salvation from humanity’s many problems. But are they really good for the planet? This conversation between Benedetta Brevini and Amanda Lagerkvist will tackle these urgent issues head on: As we stand on the brink as a civilization – due to a series of interrelated crises including climate change – how can we as communication scholars make sense of our new digital existence, of being human, and of human responsibility? And what brave moves do we need to make in our field, in order to move onto the frontlines of the digital limit situation?
Dr Benedetta Brevini is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Sydney. Before joining the academy she worked as journalist in Milan, New York and London for CNBC and RAI. She writes on The Guardian’s Comment is Free and contributes to a number of print and web publications including Index of Censorship, OpenDemocracy and the Conversation. She is the author of Public Service Broadcasting online (2013) and editor of Beyond Wikileaks (2013). Her latest volumes are Carbon Capitalism and Communication: Confronting Climate Crisis (PalgraveMacmillan, 2017), Climate Change and the Media (Peter Lang, 2018), and Amazon: Understanding a Global Communication Giant (Routledge, 2020). Is AI good for the planet (Polity, 2021) is her newest work.
Dr. Amanda Lagerkvist is Professor of Media and Communication Studies in the Department of Informatics and Media at Uppsala University. As Wallenberg Academy Fellow (2014-2018) she founded the field of existential media studies. In her work she has explored among other things digital memories, death online and automation as lived experience. She is the PI of the WASP-HS project “BioMe: Existential Challenges and Ethical Imperatives of Biometric Artificial Intelligence in Everyday Lifeworlds.” Her latest monograph, Existential Media: A Media Theory of the Limit Situation (OUP) will be published in Spring 2022.