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International Communication Association Outstanding Article Award

For Sahana Udupa, Antonis Maronikolakis and Axel Wisiorek

26.06.2024

International Communication Association Outstanding Article Award

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“Ethical scaling: Extreme speech and the (in)significance of artificial intelligence” co-authored by Sahana Udupa, Antonis Maronikolakis and Axel Wisiorek has won the ICA 2024 outstanding article award at the International Communication Association. The article, published in Big Data and Society, highlights the ambiguities and complexities of annotating problematic text in AI-assisted moderation systems. The article diagnoses the shortcomings of the content moderation and natural language processing approach as emerging from a broader epistemological trapping wrapped in the liberal-modern idea of “the human”. Presenting a decolonial critique of the “human vs machine” conundrum and drawing attention to the structuring effects of coloniality on extreme speech, the authors propose “ethical scaling” to highlight moderation process as political praxis. The research is supported by the European Research Council proof of concept funding, and was written during the Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein fellowship that Sahana Udupa received in 2021. The article is open access: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20539517231172424