The public access of ChatGPT in November 2022 has significantly changed the discourse on artificial intelligence and media education in schools. There is an increasing call for a critical approach to AI and the possible applications based on it. The aim is to provide young people with guidance on how to use this technology responsibly, thoughtfully and competently and to empower them to become digitally literate citizens. The focus of skills development is on a digitalisation-related, instrumental-functional understanding of AI, which primarily relates to generative AI. However, this ignores the fact that AI already has considerable societal dimensions and far-reaching political, social and economic effects. These also relate in various forms to the use of planetary resources, cultural goods and human labour. The advancing development of artificial intelligence also contributes to exacerbating crisis dynamics and increasing socio-economic inequalities. 

It is therefore important to impart comprehensive knowledge about digital capitalist structures in connection with AI in order to provide students with a contemporary and forward-looking media education.  This is where the present research project comes in, focussing on pop-cultural media that critically examine the current technological developments of AI from a queer-feminist, intersectional and postcolonial perspective. The focus is on comics, zines and films that have emerged from collaborations between scientists, artists and activists. The researcher assumes that impulses for a critical examination of AI in an educational context can be derived from these works.

Using a qualitative research design, comics, zines and films are analysed and the question of which central content and perspectives on AI are conveyed and which desirable visions of the future or dystopias are associated with them is investigated. Methodologically, the interdisciplinary concept of intersectionality, which has been made applicable to comics research, among other things, is suitable for this approach. In order to gain insights into the creation process of the media, interviews are also conducted with the authors. The findings with regard to their relevance for media education in schools are analysed and discussed. Selected aspects are then incorporated into the design of a media education project on the topic of AI.

Project management: Dr Anja Roß
Project duration: 2024-2026
Project funding: Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture (MWK)