Suchergebnisse

New technologies are often radical innovations that change current activities across different areas of social and economic life. At the beginning of the 21st century, some of these technologies are information and communications technology (ICT), nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence. These innovations stimulate new opportunities for the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, and thus can help solve social problems. But they also cause new social risks and inequalities.

Controversial constitutional and institutional reforms voted in May 2019 in parliament opened the way for President Gnassingbé to stand for a fourth and fifth term because the law does not apply retroactively. In February 2020, the President won again the disputed presidential elections and thus consolidated his power, assisted by the loyal army and security services. The outbreak of the Corona epidemic in Togo in March and the subsequent economic recession may have contributed to limit popular protest against the Gnassingbé regime. The human rights record of the government has improved, but remains poor. Yet, the international community followed a 'laissez faire' approach in the interests of regional stability. The economy dropped into recession due to the worldwide economic negative effects of the corona-crisis. The democracy index of the Economic Intelligence Unit, London, still rated Togo as an 'authoritarian regime'.

Web search engines influence perception of social reality by filtering and ranking information. However, their outputs are often subjected to bias that can lead to skewed representation of subjects such as professional occupations or gender. In our paper, we use a mixed-method approach to investigate presence of race and gender bias in representation of artificial intelligence (AI) in image search results coming from six different search engines. Our findings show that search engines prioritize anthropomorphic images of AI that portray it as white, whereas non-white images of AI are present only in non-Western search engines. By contrast, gender representation of AI is more diverse and less skewed towards a specific gender that can be attributed to higher awareness about gender bias in search outputs. Our observations indicate both the need and the possibility for addressing bias in representation of societally relevant subjects, such as technological innovation, and emphasize the importance of designing new approaches for detecting bias in information retrieval systems.

An exploration of state violence in Brazil draws on interviews conducted in 1993 with 14 police officers who had engaged in torture &/or murder during Brazil's military period, including Sergio, a Sao Paulo official whose four decades of police service covered years in intelligence. The various branches of Brazil's civil & military police forces are described. Sergio's emphatic denial of personally carrying out torture & his contention that the bad behavior of police officers can be controlled by rational officials illustrates the complex moral assumptions involved. He justified torture carried out under his command by suggesting that it was acceptable if it was controlled by a competent police official &/or performed for a "just cause," such as saving a child's life. Four key explanations came out in interviewee accounts of torture in which they participated: diffusing responsibility to other official bodies; blaming victims or perpetrators; citing just causes for the actions; & citing professional imperatives. The relationship of discursive content to societal conditions is discussed. Excerpts from the interviews are included. 1 Table. J. Lindroth

An exploration of state violence in Brazil draws on interviews conducted in 1993 with 14 police officers who had engaged in torture &/or murder during Brazil's military period, including Sergio, a Sao Paulo official whose four decades of police service covered years in intelligence. The various branches of Brazil's civil & military police forces are described. Sergio's emphatic denial of personally carrying out torture & his contention that the bad behavior of police officers can be controlled by rational officials illustrates the complex moral assumptions involved. He justified torture carried out under his command by suggesting that it was acceptable if it was controlled by a competent police official &/or performed for a "just cause," such as saving a child's life. Four key explanations came out in interviewee accounts of torture in which they participated: diffusing responsibility to other official bodies; blaming victims or perpetrators; citing just causes for the actions; & citing professional imperatives. The relationship of discursive content to societal conditions is discussed. Excerpts from the interviews are included. 1 Table. J. Lindroth

This article discusses aspects of future research in communication sciences related to a popular and omnipresent artefact of algorithmic machines, social robots. Social robots are defined in this article as physical entities or machines, which may resemble a human being or animal and are able to replicate certain human or life-like movements and functions. Experts predict that robots, just like AI, will replace a significant number of jobs in the near future, including non-industrial jobs such as robots working in offices or the service industry alongside human 'co-workers' (Brookfield Institute, 2016; Ford, 2015; Gunkel, 2018). Likewise, we may find more robots in our private lives, for example, replacing human care workers (Ishiguro, 2018; McGinn et al., 2020). Overall, the field of robotics, and particularly social robots, offers a broad range of research opportunities and exigencies for communication scientists. The aim of this conceptual paper is to provide a framework for the discussion of algorithms, social robots and communication sciences.