Research Results

The DiscourseNet network brings together scholars in discourse studies from dozens of countries, including researchers from BRICS countries and the Global South. On May 8, the Association held the international online Author Brainstorming and Early Stage Research Workshop “The Digitalization of the Knowledge Economy: How AI is Changing Our View on the World.”
 
Members of the Laboratory “Artificial Intelligence and Algorithmic Cultures in Contemporary Communication” Irina Dushakova and Panos Kompatsiaris participated in an international workshop and presented their research
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Irina Dushakova’s presentation “Interpretative Flexibility of AI in Media Discourses of EU AI Act in Russia” explores how artificial intelligence was conceptualized in Russian media coverage of one of the stages of the adoption of the EU AI Act in June 2023. Drawing on the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework and the theory of discourse by E. Laclau and Ch. Mouffe, the study examines this moment as a negotiation process through which the perception and public interpretations of AI were being formed.
 
The research focuses on the interpretative flexibility of AI at an early stage of the widespread public discussion of generative AI technologies. The analysis demonstrates how EU-related discourses reveal tensions between regulation, business interests, user protection, and the influence of American technology corporations, while Russian media discourses appear more homogeneous and place greater emphasis on the development of national regulation and material infrastructure.

The presentation by Panos Kompatsiaris “Humanity After Authorship: AI Imaginaries in Pluribus” examines the Pluribus television series (Apple TV+, 2025) as a popular-cultural articulation of contemporary AI imaginaries in the context of the post-generative AI knowledge economy. In the series, a benevolent collective intelligence seeks to persuade rather than coerce the remaining humans into joining a unified hive mind. The paper explores how Artificial Superintelligence and “humanity” are constructed through the opposition between collective intelligence and human individuality.
 
Using discourse-theoretical analysis grounded in post-structuralist approaches to discourse and ideology, the study analyzes how the antagonism between collective uniformity and human individuality reproduces broader ideological tensions surrounding automation, optimization, and individual agency. While the series constructs a “good AI” imaginary in which collective intelligence is portrayed as ethical, peaceful, and morally superior, “humanity” remains associated with individuality, affect, creativity, emotional instability, and the capacity for resistance. The paper argues that this opposition echoes Cold War ideological fears surrounding collective control and individual freedom, while depicting collective intelligence as a force of uniformity that erases difference.