[Commlist] Call for abstracts "Artificial Intelligence: A Media Odyssey" (Special Issue)

*Artificial Intelligence: A Media Odyssey*
/(eds. Frédéric Clavert, Valérie Schafer, Benjamin Thierry)/

Call for abstracts: Special Issue of /Le Temps des 
Médias/ (https://shs.cairn.info/revue-le-temps-des-medias?lang=fr 
<https://shs.cairn.info/revue-le-temps-des-medias?lang=fr>)

 From the android in /Metropolis/ (1927) and HAL 9000 in /2001: A Space 
Odyssey/ (1968), to Samantha in /Her/ (2013), through the replicants in 
/Blade Runner/ (1982) or J.A.R.V.I.S in /Iron Man/ (from 2008 onwards), 
media fictions shape our imagination and our representations of 
Artificial Intelligence. In animation, creations such as /Ghost in the 
Shell/ (1995) and /Wall-E/ (2008) have linked AI with emotional depth, 
offering a counterbalance to the dominant theme of human-threatening 
technology depicted in /Terminator/ (1984) or the series /Black 
Mirror/ (2011-2013). In literature, authors like Isaac Asimov, William 
Gibson, Arthur C. Clarke, and Philip K. Dick have explored questions of 
machine consciousness and ethics, and the place of humanity when faced 
with thinking machines.

Media narratives play a major role in constructing the story of AI, a 
story built through an endless search for origins - from the golem to 
early modern automata (including the fraudulent Mechanical Turk) and 
Karel Čapek's Robots. These narratives, of course, extend far beyond 
fiction. In an era of intense media coverage surrounding the promotional 
discourse of generative AIs such as ChatGPT, Grok, or DALL·E, and 
celebrations of machine surpassing man, milestones like Deep Blue’s 
chess victory over Garry Kasparov in 1997 or AlphaGo’s win against Lee 
Sedol in Go (2016) are among the most widely popular highlights in the 
history of AI. Furthermore, the way media both cover and integrate//AI 
invites us to deeper reflection on the future of media - especially in 
the age of deepfakes and mass editorial content generation (chatbots, 
conversational agents, etc.), and on how these developments impact the 
very evolution of media forms and journalistic practices.

We welcome submissions based on archival materials and corpora that 
incorporate a necessary historical and/or diachronic dimension. 
Contributions may, but are not limited to, the following thematic areas:

*Representations of AI in the Media*
This first theme includes the evolution of AI figures (from robot to 
algorithm to generative AI) in literature, comics, film, television, 
video games, the web, and other media forms, as well as the study of the 
narratives media offer around AI (utopias, dystopias, ethical 
debates...). It also includes analysis of the metaphors and approaches 
linked to AI within specific contexts (e.g., the Cold War, the digital 
“revolution”), and how these vary across regions and cultures through 
their media portrayal.

*History of AI and the Media*
This second theme focuses on the periodization and analysis of media 
coverage of AI developments (from the Dartmouth Workshop to today’s 
generative AI), the interactions between AI researchers and media 
(popularization, controversies, expert visibility...), and the 
historical perspective on utopian and dystopian discourses surrounding 
AI. It also invites exploration of how AI innovations have impacted 
media forms, social media (recommendation algorithms, bots, AI-generated 
images, etc.), and journalistic practices (online media have been 
experimenting with generative AI for over a decade).

*Timeline*

*Deadline for abstract submission (in French or English):* July 15, 2025

*Notification of acceptance:* July 25, 2025

*Deadline for full paper submission:* January 15, 2026

*Expected publication:* First issue of 2027

(Some papers in English may be translated and published in French with 
the agreement of the authors - we would take care of professional 
translations and no payment from the authors would be required for 
translation or/and publication)

*Submission Guidelines*

Proposals (300 to 500-word abstract + references) must be accompanied by 
a short biography (100 words) of the author(s). Acceptance of the 
abstract does not guarantee publication as articles will undergo 
double-blind peer review.

*Contact*
Submissions should be sent to Valérie Schafer ((valerie.schafer /at/ uni.lu)) 
by *July 15, 2025*
For any questions, please feel free to reach out.

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