CAS SEE Seminars with Guests: Mario Hibert

Rooted in manifestations of ongoing collapse of “the social” (Lovink, 2012) this presentation will tackle actuality of epistemic disruption, information disorder, technological solutionism, and dark enlightenment in order to re-frame media and information literacy approaches to the current AI hype. In that light, “data colonialism” (Couldry and Mejias, 2019) and its structural violence, will be explained using concept of “new extractivism” (Joler 2021) showing that exploitation of biodata is not only the new gold rush but “a new regime of truth, scientific proof, social normativity and rationality” (Pasquinelli and Joler, 2020). According to M. Pasquinelli (2023) the inner code of AI does not imitate biological intelligence but the (social history) of intelligence of labour and social relations, accordingly, apart from being products of big data spectacle, netizens, whose free labour and data footprints enhance smart, digital authoritarianism, ossify existing power relations. On the other side, media and information literacy (MIL), their programs and trainings in domain of digital, civic competencies, poorly refer “to the ongoing individualisation, fragmentation, and emotionalisation of information and the proliferation of strategically circulated misinformation” (Haider & Sundin, 2022). Moreover, media and information literacy is often perceived as personal attribute of self-commodification, not as a social practice. By highlighting of environmental costs and harms od AI, particularly, “artificial intelligence is a registry of power” (Crawford, 2021), an emerging field of eco-media literacy (Lopez, 2021) will be introduced opposing techno-deterministic, instrumental and reductionist outlooks to MIL.