回归传播本身:后人类时代社交机器人的阐释逻辑与理论路径

Returning to Communication:The Interpretive Logic and Theoretical Path of Social Bots in the Post-Human Era

今天,不断迭代更新的传播技术使得“人—机”传播互动成为人类越来越普遍的经验,社交机器人已经发展成为社交媒体传播生态的一个重要参与变量,对政治、经济、社会产生明显影响。本文试图将社交机器人所产生的传播实践视为一种新传播现象,并挖掘其内在阐释逻辑。本文首先在计算机科学视域下对社交机器人的基本内涵进行了初步探讨;其次受科学技术学中拉图尔的行动者网络理论和“相互形塑”观点的启发,阐释社交机器人的传播主体性;最后,本文借助科技—文化研究框架,从技术批判视角反思了社交机器人与人类、文化结构与社会体系之间的关系。本文认为,对于传播研究来说,要想理解社交机器人及以其为代表的后人类时代的种种传播现象,研究者必得回归传播本身,从而厘清人类与技术之间复杂的依存关系。

Today,iterative communication technologies have made“human-machine”communication interaction an increasingly common human experience,and social bots have developed into an important participatory variable in the communication ecology of social media,with obvious impacts on politics,economy,and society.This paper attempts to consider the communication practices generated by social bots as a new communication phenomenon,and to explore its inherent interpretive logic.This paper first explores the basic connotation of social bots in the context of computer science,and then explains the communication subjectivity of social bots inspired by Latour’s actor network theory and the“mutual shaping”perspective in science and technology.Finally,the author reflects on the relationship between social bots and humans,cultural structures and social systems from a techno-critical perspective,drawing on the framework of technology-culture studies.This paper argues that in order to understand social bots and the post-human era of communication represented by them,we must return to communication itself and clarify the complex dependencies between humans and technology.