Ai Infrastructures and Sustainability: Expanding Perspectives on Automation, Communication and Media

This open access book assembles cutting-edge research in media and communication exploring AI infrastructures and sustainability. It builds upon and expands perspectives on media infrastructure, addressing critical issues such as environmental impacts, economic concentration, and social justice – areas that have not been comprehensively examined under the umbrella term “sustainability” within discussions on AI. The authors explore the complex social, economic and material processes through which AI formations take shape, and offer novel perspectives on the entanglement of digital media, AI and sustainability discourses as they manifest in the shaping of futures with AI.

Anne Mollen is a postdoc researcher at the University of Münster. Her research focuses on justice in the context of automation, digital media and data-centric technologies, specifically social and environmental justice. She has been a member of the Sustainable AI working group of the German Committee for Sustainability Research.

Fieke Jansen is a postdoc researcher and co-principal investigator with the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam. Her research interest is to understand how the material impact of expanding infrastructures is shaping the management, distribution, and depletion of natural resources. Fieke did her PhD at the data justice lab of Cardiff University.

Sigrid Kannengießer is Professor of Communication Science with a focus on Media Sociology at the University of Münster, Germany. Her research interests include digital technologies, AI infrastructures and sustainability; critical data practices; energy communication; social movements; and gender media studies.

Julia Velkova is Professor of Media and Culture at Linköping University. Her research explores the relations between digital infrastructures and energy, and the temporalities of media infrastructure. She is the co-editor of Media Backends: Digital Infrastructures and Sociotechnical Relations (2023).