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This is the repository for the online module Bots as Digital Infrapuncture, commissioned by the Utrecht University
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bots-as-digital-infrapunctures/content/Section 3 - Bots/1-introduction.md

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Title: Introduction: Bots Slug: 01-s3-introduction Date: 2020-11-01 12:00 Summary: What type of bots are being made?

Having just unfolded what infrastructural harms could be, we now move to exploring bots. When we say bots, we refer to software agents which automatise certain actions and can run autonomously or semi-autonomously. Some of the most mentioned examples are voice assistants such as Alexa or Siri, but they can also be web crawlers indexing the web or bots maintaining Wikipedia.

The particular bots we are interested in for this online module are those that act as an interface between the digital platform and human users, or what Andreas Hepp calls communicative robots1, robots that "are defined as autonomously operating systems designed for the purpose of quasi-communication with human beings to enable further algorithmic-based functionalities – often but not always on the basis of artificial intelligence" [page numbers].

In this section, we will introduce Andreas Hepp, professor of media and communications at the ZeMKI, University of Bremen.

  1. Hepp, Andreas. "Artificial companions, social bots and work bots: communicative robots as research objects of media and communication studies" Media, Culture & Society Volume 42 (2020): 1410-1426. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0163443720916412 ↩︎