Imagining risk in AI-based neuroprosthetics: sociotechnical futures of care in Parkinson’s disease

This paper’s focus is Russia, a country where trust in police has been low for decades. We examine key factors that explain citizens’ assessments of risk and safety, perceptions of police legitimacy and engagement in precautionary behaviors. We further explore the relationship between gender, prior victimization, and neighborhood incivilities to explain citizens’ safety perceptions. Two key findings emerge from a survey of millennials from St. Petersburg, Russia. Police legitimacy is a strong predictor that is positively related to citizens’ safety perceptions. However, engagement in precautionary behaviors is inversely related to respondents’ safety and risk perceptions. In addition, we have found that being a female is a strong predictor of feeling unsafe, a finding consistent with studies from other parts of the world. Neighborhood incivilities are negatively associated with safety perceptions, but its effect was only marginal for men in the subgroup analysis. Implications for the citizens’ practices of engagement in co-producing safety versus enhancing police legitimacy and the police role in enhancing risk and safety perceptions are discussed.

With the proliferation of students’ abilities to use technology, in particular virtual reality (VR) applications, teachers are experimenting with VR in virtual learning environments (VLE) to engage students; but clear ethics and safety guidelines are not available. Within the field of education additional research is needed to determine how VR is employed in VLEs. Additionally, what are the decision-making processes of educators for the VR programs chosen for classroom use based on ethics and student safety? Through qualitative inquiry, educators from K–12 and higher education shared their perceptions of ethics and safety concerns in VR applications for use in the classroom. We collected data from a sample of K–12 and higher education professionals from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) membership, an educational organization emphasizing technology integration and learning. Data analysis from the individual interviews with open-ended questions revealed five primary themes and twelve sub-themes. Participants agreed that they need ethical and safety guidelines as they embark on new horizons that influence student well-being. The findings from this study may provide an in-depth understanding of the importance of developing ethics and safety guidelines for educational VR programs when used by students.

This paper examines secondary teachers’ perceptions of digital citizenship education and the sociotechnical imaginaries that shape how they prepare students to live, work, and participate in postdigital societies. Sociotechnical imaginaries are formed through collective visions about the role of technology in society that influence teachers’ perceptions and practices. Both optimistic and pessimistic visions across local and global contexts influence how educators perceive the digital and teach towards envisioned digital futures. The postdigital future classroom serves as both a material and conceptual space where these imaginaries are negotiated and stabilised. This research adapted postdigital methods, mapping and tracing, to analyse data from 11 semi-structured interviews with teachers from across the curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand. Mapping was used to identify and expose alleged ‘realistic’ futures, and tracing was used to examine the influential mechanisms and processes that led to teacher participants’ current understandings and uses of the digital. Findings show that participants’ perceptions of digital citizenship education are based around maximising ‘success’ with digital technologies through encouraging ‘appropriate’ and discouraging ‘inappropriate’ ways of using digital technologies. Yet, findings also recognise the postdigital future classroom as a site where sociotechnical imaginaries are enacted and reshaped in practice. The paper calls for empowering teachers to interrogate the underlying assumptions associated with digital technologies and challenge normative visions of digital futures.

The emergence of ChatGPT and other Generative AI tools (GenAI) capable of producing human-like texts sparked debates concerning whether we are at the dawn of a new age of writing and meaning-making. Rather than weighing in on the potential impact of GenAI, this paper engages with the implicit sociotechnical imaginaries underpinning reactions to GenAI. One particularly evocative source for sociotechnical imaginaries are fictional texts, which can shape our shared imagination of possible and probable futures. Accordingly, I analyze two seminal works of fiction: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Planet eBooks, 1818) and Franz Kafka’s The Trial (Echo Library, 1925). Frankenstein is regarded as an enduring myth that has shaped perceptions of artificial life. This paper sets out to explore the limitations of the ‘Frankensteinian sociotechnical imaginary’ by unpacking AI’s assumed modes of meaning-making along three axes: (1) agency, (2) relations, and (3) control. Within the Frankensteinian sociotechnical imaginary, AI is approached in anthropomorphic terms, emphasizing the struggle over control of meaning-making without reshaping its overarching logic. The Trial, in contrast, offers a lens that challenges common dichotomies underpinning the Frankenstein model: (1) highlighting the entanglement between AI and human intentionality in processes of meaning-making, (2) exploring human-AI relations as recursively shaped through the complementary tendency of humans and GenAI to generate and infer meaning, and (3) shifting the notion of control from a struggle over domination to an emphasis on how GenAI concurrently expands the available choices while limiting humans’ influence over patterns of meaning-making.

The importance of gender is increasingly recognised in energy research, with growing awareness of the intersections of energy access and gender equity. Yet, a major knowledge gap exists regarding the role of professional intermediaries and institutions in reproducing and/or challenging gendered forms of energy exclusion, especially in the Global South. This paper addresses this gap by considering the gendered energy imaginaries of energy professionals in Global South contexts. Integrating literature on socio-technical imaginaries – which to date has been developed in predominantly Global North contexts – with feminist accounts of gender, energy and development, this paper investigates gendered imaginaries of energy access among energy professionals across four Global South contexts (India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Ghana). The case-study approach involved thematic analysis of interviews with 86 energy professionals, and revealed a spectrum of gendered energy imaginaries with two archetypes at the extremes of the spectrum: (1) The Gender-Neutral Grid Imaginary (GNGI); and, (2) The Gender-Aware Decentralised Development Imaginary (GADDI). These two imaginaries are unpacked in terms of their underlying actors, practices, and outcomes. Special attention is paid to how different constructions of the ‘end-user’ within professional imaginaries work to perpetuate or alleviate forms of gendered exclusion. These visions propagate energy access outcomes by shaping women’s access to and use of technologies, decision-making, and employment in the energy sector. Findings reveal that whilst the GADDI imaginary shows better considerations for gendered energy access, existing gendered imaginaries among professionals fall short across the spectrum in generating equitable outcomes. The paper concludes by providing specific recommendations for energy practice and policy dominating the energy transition landscape in the Global South and reiterates the need to move beyond ‘gender-mainstreaming’ towards intersectional conceptions of social equity and energy justice. This is vital to address the gaps in existing professional and institutional imaginaries that shape energy access outcomes.

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the moderating role of psychological capital (PC) and the mediating role of safety climate (SC) in the relationship between the perception of psychological well-being (PWB) and ethical climate perception (ECP) of yacht crews in commercial yachts.Design/methodology/approachThis study follows a quantitative approach. Data were obtained from a total of 339 yacht crews in Türkiye. The data were analyzed using SPSS 22 and AMOS 22 statistics package software.FindingsThis study uncovers the role of SC and PC in the causal relationship between the PWB and ECP of yacht crews who are, as tourism and maritime industry employees, expected to exhibit positive organizational attitudes and behaviors. The PWB of yacht crews in the work environment is affected by their SC and PC levels.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the holistic model of this study is a strong one, there are some limitations. The sample includes only Turkish yacht crews in yacht organizations in Türkiye. Yacht crews work periodically under harsh conditions. We acquired the research data from the yacht crews who had experienced the challenging environment; hence, the findings are specific to the crews. Ethical perceptions and standards may differ across cultures; for this reason, future research on employees in different organizations may conclude with different results. The significance of this research lies in the fact that it tests a comprehensive model.Practical implicationsThis study can guide managers in finding ways to affect the PWB of crews. Ethical and safety climate should be taken into account by yacht organizations to improve the perceptions of yacht crews. The findings show that ECP and SC have a positive effect on the PWB of yacht crews. From this perspective, this study suggests that yacht organizations should involve their crews in their ethical decisions to foster an ECP. Yacht businesses should act consistently in all areas and adopt clear safety and ethical rules and procedures for yacht crews to follow to create a perception of ethical and safety climate.Social implicationsThis study contends that yacht crews, who face lengthy shifts and professional duties, are a component of the tourism and maritime industries. The findings indicated the necessity for more study on different perspectives related to the factors that impact PWB in the light of the employees. There are relatively scarce data on yacht crews and the relationship between their PWB, SC, ECP and personality constructs such as PC. This research shows that the PWB of yacht crews in stressful and demanding working environments depends on positive ECP and high PC through SC.Originality/valueThis study is the first to assess the role of SC and PC in the relationship between the ECP and PWB of yacht crews. It further aims to fill the research gaps and build on the tourism and maritime literature on yacht crews and PWB, and climate within the tourism and maritime context.

The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor is a featured project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative that is creating new resource frontiers in Tharparkar, Pakistan. Centered around coal mining and energy production, these new sites of resource extraction and their infrastructures have sparked dissensus throughout the Desert district of Sindh, Pakistan. Our analysis draws on research on socio-technical imaginaries and Rancière’s thoughts on political change and aesthetics. In doing so, we examine how political dissensus is represented though graffiti and works in contrast to the socio-technical imaginaries represented by the state in public signage. The differences, we suggest, represent socio-technical counter imaginaries that form a politics that disrupts the established socio-political order embedded within the political goals of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor. These counter imaginaries have important implications for the creation of just and equitable opportunities for people impacted by the emerging coal extraction and power generation complex. Our ethnographic approach provides a street-level analysis of the politicization of imagined socio-technical futures in the Tharparkar desert and emerging energy resource frontiers.

The concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (SIs) has been widely used and proven fruitful to understand diverging trajectories of technologies. While scholars have acknowledged the multi-layered materialisation of SIs and highlighted the importance of the communicative layer therein, this aspect has remained under-conceptualised. Therefore, we propose an analytical framework to better understand Sociotechnical Imaginaries in Public Communication (SIPCs), defined as publicly constructed visions of (un)desirable sociotechnical futures that guide action, mobilise resources and lay out trajectories for the materialisation or prevention of those futures. In this article, we first discuss relevant strands of research on SIs and public communication. We then lay out the analytical framework of SIPCs that enables the rigorous reconstruction and comparison of sociotechnical imaginaries in public and mediated communication. Finally, we illustrate the framework with examples from public communication about artificial intelligence, an emerging key technology in contemporary societies.

The war in Ukraine and the US administration's growing disengagement from European security have led to a paradigm shift in European defence. While contestation and negotiation about strategic priorities are inevitable, some of this division emerges from competing visions about the future of European defence: one focusing on a industrialised, war economy-type of rearmament, and one focusing on new, disruptive technologies, embracing dual-use promises and dilemmas. What happens when different sociotechnical imaginaries compete while urgent decisions need to be taken to reshape the future? The article examines the contestation process to analyse the European defence industrial and technological developments since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. We argue that contestations about European defence's socio-technical future take place on three main dimensions: time, financing, and ontology—crystalizing two main different visions. These visions are not mutually exclusive but they lead to different public policy solutions, and therefore understanding what they rest upon is fundamental. Theoretically, we contribute to the sociotechnical imaginary literature by analysing how sociotechnical imaginaries retain analytical utility in moments of crisis.

10 - Community energy initiatives as a space for emerging imaginaries? Experiences from Switzerland

The “nuclear renaissance” of recent years is accompanied by the emergence of a new corpus of pro-nuclear energy cultural artifacts. They include documentaries like Pandora’s Promise (2013) and Atomic Hope (2022), campaigns by “Generation Atomic” and “Mothers for Nuclear”, or social media content by Isodope, the first self-proclaimed “nuclear energy influencer”. While tapping into pro-technological and ecomodernist discourses, their visuals and narratives also ‘green’ and ‘feminize’ pro-nuclear culture, transforming visions of nuclear energy futures through the mobilization of tropes historically found in anti-nuclear discourses. These reorientations point towards a powerful new (pro-)nuclear sociotechnical imaginary emerging in the 21st century which presents an enticing alternative to more radical visions of system change and degrowth in Western environmental movements.This paper examines these contemporary pro-nuclear energy narratives and aesthetics through an analysis of cultural artifacts such as documentaries, social media posts, activist statements, and campaign materials. With a theoretical grounding in the environmental, energy, and nuclear humanities, it seeks to develop an understanding of contemporary sociotechnical imaginaries of nuclear power to grasp shifting public debates about a sustainable and equitable energy transition in the US and Western Europe.

A growing body of research is investigating the connections between the discursive construction of circular economy (CE) and its influences on public policies that promote the socio-technological transition towards circular production and consumption systems. However, surprisingly little attention has focused on how CE discourses interact with science, technology, and innovation (ST&I) actors. To address this gap, this research adopts the prism of socio-technical imaginaries to understand specific visions of circularity in science and innovation, exploring how competing imaginaries mobilize specific actors, institutions, and visions of a greener future. Our empirical material included archival documentation from the Norwegian government and funded research projects on CE. Our analysis identified two key tension points within these imaginaries: “International drivers versus regional and local transition arenas” and “Ecological modernization versus sectoral transformation.” We suggest that tensions are inherent in CE socio-technical imaginaries but are often silenced or minimized by institutional discourses on circularity. Our findings suggest that official CE policy programs tend to minimize or overtly ignore criticisms and contestation that are increasingly raised in academic circles. Our findings indicate the need for increased involvement of ST&I actors and other societal actors (such as NGOs and the private sector) in the CE policymaking process to avoid endless growth as an unexpected CE policy outcome.

ABSTRACTThe United States (US), European Union (EU), and South Korea had different definitions and visions of technological convergence before interacting with each other from the late 2000s. The Korean government has used Western policies as a benchmark but produces a distinct concept of technological convergence due to a particular imaginary of technology as a vehicle for national economic growth. This sociotechnical imaginary of technological developmentalism influences Korea’s translation of technological convergence from other jurisdictions. Because the sociotechnical imaginaries of different nations are difficult to communicate across national contexts, the translation of visions often changes the original meaning of things like technological convergence. Western sociotechnical imaginaries such as human enhancement and sustainable development do not translate well into South Korea due to the national imaginary of technological developmentalism. First, Korea’s Lee administration predominantly envisioned converging technology (CT) as a new growth engine, in contrast to the US and EU which emphasize visions of trans-humanist or sustainable futures respectively. Second, the Park administration’s CT vision imitates the Western societal challenge-driven rationale, but this vision was not enacted. As such, the democratic, sustainable imaginary of societal challenge-driven innovation is not easily translated into Korea’s national imaginary or technology policy.

This Chapter explores the potential of the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries for digital touch communication research and design. It defines the social imaginary and discusses how it works to produce and animate shared systems of meaning and belonging that guide and organize the world, in its histories as well as performed visions of desirable futures through advances in science and technology and imagined technological possibilities. The chapter explores the ways in which this concept can be employed as both a design resource, and as a methodological resource. We argue that as new digital touch technologies enter the communicational landscape the setting for interpersonal sociability is/will be reworked. We explore and make legible emerging sociotechnical imaginaries of digital touch, asking how might touch practices be changed through the uses of technology, and how might this shape communication. In particular, the chapter explores the core themes of the body, time, and place in relation to participants’ sociotechnical imaginations of digital touch. Turning our attention to the sociotechnical imaginary as a methodological resource, we describe our use of a range of creative, making and bodily touch-based methods to access participants’ sociotechnical imaginaries of digital touch and to both explore and re-orientate to the past, present and futures of digital touch communication.

Rising consumption of bottled water and sugar-sweetened beverages poses challenges for health, environmental sustainability, and equity in access to safe drinking water. This systematic review examines interventions promoting a shift from bottled drinks to tap or plain water, focusing on behavioral mechanisms and impacts on health, nutrition, and the environment. Studies reviewed included diverse settings and methodologies, assessing outcomes related to beverage intake and associated indicators. Successful interventions combined infrastructure improvements, such as hydration stations, with education and policy changes favoring tap water. Behavioral responses were influenced by perceptions of safety and taste, while socio-economic and demographic factors affected effectiveness. Interventions generally led to reduced consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and increased tap-water intake, with evidence of improved health outcomes in high-risk populations. Modelling studies anticipated significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and resource use by substituting tap water for bottled beverages. The review concludes that well-designed interventions can foster healthier beverage systems but calls for longer-term assessments that encompass health, environmental, and equity outcomes.