Pieter Verdegem publishes new article on critical AI research in Sociology Compass

Dr Pieter Verdegem, Reader in Technology and Society and leader of CAMRI’s Communication, Technology and Society research theme, has published a new open-access article in Sociology Compass. Co-authored with Jian Xiao of Zhejiang University, “Hype, Resistance, Power and Inequalities: Why Synthesizing Critical Perspectives Is Essential to AI Research” proposes an integrated theoretical framework that combines critical political economy and cultural studies to analyse AI and its societal implications.

The article argues that studying AI requires moving beyond either/or approaches. While political economy reveals how power concentrates in big tech and exposes the structural inequalities of AI capitalism, cultural studies illuminates how individuals and communities negotiate, resist and exercise agency within these systems. By combining these perspectives, the framework examines the structural analysis of AI ownership and control, intersectional dimensions of AI power beyond class, critical analysis of AI discourses and hype, forms of resistance and alternative visions, and ethnographic approaches to AI research.

The article builds on Verdegem’s extensive body of work on the political economy of digital technologies, including his edited volume AI for Everyone? Critical Perspectives (University of Westminster Press), and his current British Academy Innovation Fellowship with Ofcom examining the public impact of AI on media trust.

The full article is available open access at: https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/soc4.70155

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