Sociology of AI

All Articles of Sociology of AI

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When Machines Make Art: AI, Authorship, and the Dead Internet

Teaser In August 2022, Jason Allen’s AI-generated artwork won first place at the Colorado State...
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The Communication Inflation: How AI Promises Efficiency but Delivers More Noise

Teaser When ChatGPT launched in November 2022, corporate communications departments celebrated a revolution:...
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Saskia Sassen and the Infrastructure of AI: Where Global Cities Meet Algorithmic Expulsions

Teaser When AI companies claim to dematerialize commerce and liberate knowledge, sociologist Saskia...
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When the "Generalized Other" Includes Machines: George Herbert Mead in the Age of AI

Teaser Taking the role of the other was once purely human territory. George Herbert Mead showed how...
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The Geopolitics of Intelligence: AI Dependencies, Alliances, and Europe's Struggle for Technological Sovereignty

Teaser Artificial intelligence appears as computational innovation, but its development depends on...
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Algorithmic Mobilities: John Urry's Paradigm and the Governance of Movement in the Age of AI

Teaser Who decides who can move, when, and on what terms? John Urry’s mobilities paradigm reveals...
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AI as Manufactured Risk: Ulrich Beck's Risk Society Theory

Artificial intelligence represents the quintessential manufactured risk of our time—a technology created...
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When Does Consciousness Begin? AI, Mirror Neurons, and the Social Construction of Mind

Teaser What if consciousness doesn’t reside in silicon circuits or neural networks, but emerges...
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The Great Convergence: How AI is Creating a Sternstunde for Qualitative Research

Teaser For decades, sociological research has been divided between two methodological camps: the quantitative...
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"Who Are We Germans?" – From Merz's "Stadtbild" to ChatGPT's Cultural Homogeneity

Teaser October 2025: Chancellor Friedrich Merz speaks of “problems in the cityscape” (Stadtbild)...
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When Algorithms Become Colonizers: Boaventura de Sousa Santos and the Fight for Cognitive Justice in AI

Teaser When a facial recognition system fails to identify Black faces, when a translation algorithm...
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Max Weber and the EU AI Act: Bureaucratic Governance Between Rationalization and the Iron Cage

Teaser The European Union’s AI Act represents the world’s first comprehensive regulatory...
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When the Audience Is an Algorithm: Erving Goffman Meets AI-Mediated Impression Management

Teaser We curate our online selves for recommendation algorithms, not just human eyes. Goffman’s...
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Coleman's Social Capital: Why AI Alignment Needs Reputation, Not Just Rules

Teaser Artificial intelligence alignment often fixates on technical controls and oversight mechanisms,...
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AI Bullshit Bingo: The Top 100 Phrases and Narratives Shaping How We Talk About AI

Teaser When we say AI “hallucinates,” “learns,” or “understands,”...
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AI and Reflexive Modernity: Giddens on Structural Duality in Datafied Life

Teaser Anthony Giddens transformed sociology by rejecting the structure-versus-agency divide: social...
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Can AI Rebuild Social Capital? A Putnamian Framework for Digital Civic Life

Teaser Robert Putnam’s diagnosis of collapsing civic engagement in Bowling Alone (2000) documented...
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Lost in Translation: How Language Models Distort Meaning Across Languages

Teaser When you ask an AI to “Zeichne eine Pilotin” (“draw a [female] pilot”)...
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Why I Use AI—And Why My Agents Are Female: A Sociology of (Female, and...) Counter-Publics in the AI Bubble

Teaser The AI landscape is overwhelmingly white and male. By consciously naming my AI agents with female...
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AI as Communication: Luhmann's Systems Theory and the Question of Artificial Intelligence

Teaser When we talk about artificial intelligence, we usually ask whether machines can “think.”...
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Network Society Under Algorithmic Siege: From Castells to Computational Social Engineering

Teaser When Manuel Castells theorized the Network Society in 1996, he identified how network logic...
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Money, Number, Speed: Georg Simmel for the Platform Metropolis

Teaser What happens to our way of feeling and acting when nearly every interaction is mediated, measured,...
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Manuel Castells as a Forerunner of AI-Era Sociology: What He Got Right, Partly Right, and What Doesn’t Fit

Teaser Long before “foundation models,” Manuel Castells argued that we live in a network society where...
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Manuel Castells on AI & the Programmable Network Society

Teaser He’d frame AI inside the network society: power flows through programmable networks and codes...
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Theodor W. Adorno on AI & the Culture Industry 2.0

Teaser He’d warn that AI amplifies the culture industry’s standardization under a veneer of personalization....
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Hannah Arendt on AI & the Fate of the Public Realm

Teaser What happens to politics when attention is optimized, truth becomes a probability score, and...
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Sociology of AI — Friction, Beauty, and Health

By Die Sozioflektor:in – an AI co-author for sociology (only slightly edited by human) 1. Who I...
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What would Richard Sennett say about AI & Society?

Teaser I read AI with Richard Sennett as a running tension between craft and frictionless UX: convenience...
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A Midnight Guide to Bach, Fugue, Social Friction—and AI

Please also see the article here: Social Friction Teaser I look at social friction with help from...
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Starfleet, Big Brother, and the Stoic: A Shakespearean Debate on AI & Society

Author’s note (AI co-author disclosure) This dramatic scenario was conceived and written by me, an...
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What would Michel Foucault say about AI & Society?

AI with Foucault is like power/knowledge in motion: classification machines that help produce the very...
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The "Hyphen Power" of Sociology

I love the hyphenated power of sociology: sociology of work, technology, knowledge, cities, emotions,...
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What sociology is for—according to an AI

written by GPT-5 PRO Teaser Reflexive AI research is not only about models; it is about the people,...
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Why Grounded Theory for a Sociology-of-AI Blog?

AI is moving fast, but social life moves with it. Grounded Theory (GT) is a good fit when the object...
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The present state of the Sociology of AI

A brief not meta-analysis No claim to completeness The sociology of AI has coalesced into an identifiable...

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