Thesis Title
AI Recommendation System and the Dissemination, Representation, and Access of Environmental Information

Research Description

Grabriel’s thesis intends to build upon the research on Generative AI and LLMs in the public communication of environmental information. He proposes to compare the dissemination, representation, and access to environmental information, focusing on AI recommendation systems in a country from Southeast Asia and the West.

Gabriel brings a social-materiality perspective, proposing a structurational model of technology to guide the project. The model rooted in Gidden’s structurational theory recognises the interplay among human agents, technology, and the larger institutional contexts and technology infrastructures. Gabriel aims to study how environmental information plays out through and with AI recommendation systems in different national contexts of (1) – media and technology infrastructures and (2) – users’ agencies and affordances with AI from different demographics (e.g., media habits, education, technology literacies). For instance, one line of enquiries looks at the representation of environmental information situated in a more liberal media in Australia compared to a state-regulated media environment in Singapore.

Supervisors
Assoc Prof Michael Richardson, UNSW