Aug 2026· Dialogues in Humanities and Social Sciences· pp. 63· 0 citations
Abstract
This paper explores how six major technology companies: Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, Google, and Meta address the environmental implications of their artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure through their discourse in different genres of official documents. The research draws on corporate texts, including sustainability reports, executive keynotes, shareholder letters, and regulatory filings, along with independent evidence from non-corporate sources. The research investigates three questions. First, it examines how rhetorical strategies vary by communication genre and target audience. Second, it assesses how temporal deferral functions as a means of legitimation across the dataset. Finally, it evaluates whether discursive confidence enabled by temporal deferral correlates with weaker material emissions performance across the sample. Utilising inductive discourse analysis grounded in sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009, 2015); the sociology of expectations (Brown & Michael, 2003; Borup et al., 2006); and Crawford's (2021) materialistic critique of computation, the findings indicate a consistent dual narrative structure: an outward-looking promissory register (performed primarily through keynote addresses and shareholder letters) that represents AI as an active ecological actor, and an inward-looking defensive register (limited to regulatory filings) that re-classifies those same obligations as non binding legal risks. Further comparative analysis of this two-register structure against the 2020-2024 emissions trajectories for each corporation indicates a striking asymmetry. Building on prior use of the term"technowashing" (Perakslis, 2020; Ribeiro & Soromenho-Marques, 2022), this paper refines this concept within climate-AI discourse by analyzing its reliance on uncolonized future times where Big Tech uses speculative promises about a future humans have not reached yet to shape the present debate(Brown & Michael, 2003). It argues that this temporal deferral does not merely exaggerate claims; rather, it allows AI-driven promissory discourse to expand alongside rising rates of material extraction, rather than emissions being reduced by tech solutions.
This paper extends the post-factual polity framework into AI infrastructure and public administration systems theory. It asks how proprietary analytical platforms alter the state’s capacity to produce, audit, and contest the categories through which risk, threat, eligibility, fraud, and deviance become actionable. Using a structured documentary case analysis of Palantir Technologies across United States agencies and allied jurisdictions, the study applies three diagnostic markers—categorical opacity, contestation displacement, and substitutive dependency—to examine the migration of sovereign classification into vendor-controlled infrastructure. The research gap was identified through an integrative review of public administration, AI governance, algorithmic accountability, systems theory, surveillance studies, and Palantir scholarship. The analysis distinguishes AI epistemic capture from ordinary IT vendor lock-in: the former concerns not merely technical dependence or high exit costs but the loss of public capacity to define and contest consequential administrative categories. The paper argues that administrative law, procurement reform, and algorithmic impact assessment remain necessary but insufficient when agencies lack substitutive capacity. It specifies untangling as a systems-level task involving capacity reconstruction, categorical repatriation, contractual restructuring, and procurement reorientation. Hybrid intelligence is advanced as a post-untangling architecture that embeds machine processing within contestable, accountable, and legally governed human judgment. The contribution is diagnostic, methodological, and design-oriented for AI systems governance.
AI is increasingly embedded in government, yet its meanings and implications remain contested and often misunderstood. Science fiction is an important yet underexplored source shaping public understandings of AI by generating collective imaginaries through polarized narratives. This paper introduces a typology structured along three axes: scale of governance (micro, meso, macro), type of AI (robotic, conversational, algorithmic), and narrative role (helper, subject, opponent). We apply the typology to 76 films and 68 reflective essays from university students. Findings reveal an overrepresentation of conversational, antagonistic AI at micro and meso scales in fiction whereas participants overrepresent algorithmic AI at the macro scale. The findings reveal convergences and divergences that expose forms of sociotechnical blindness in how AI in government is imagined. The study contributes to research by offering a theoretical lens to analyse fictional AI narratives, comparing representations and perceptions, and introducing cultural artefacts to study AI in government.
Lisa Dewulf, Anthony Simonofski, N. B. Rosselló et al.· EGOV-CeDEM-ePart 2026· 0 citations
In financial accounting, intangible assets derive their value from stakeholder recognition rather than physical substance. Using this idea as an analytical lens, this study examines how the Canaan metaphor, the biblical Promised Land invoked by the Late Rt. Hon. Raila Amolo Odinga became one of the most enduring symbolic political narratives in Kenya's democratic history. Across four presidential campaigns (1997–2017) and nearly three decades of public life, the Canaan promise was never realized through electoral victory, yet its symbolic significance continued to grow. Drawing on accounting theory, particularly intangible asset valuation, stakeholder theory, and brand equity, this study develops and introduces the Political Asset Valuation Framework (PAVF) as an analytical framework for examining rhetorical intensity, stakeholder loyalty, narrative resilience within political communication. The study is anchored on the biblical Joshua narrative to explain how delayed fulfilment can strengthen symbolic political meaning over time. A mixed-methods sequential explanatory design was employed, combining quantitative content analysis, qualitative rhetorical analysis, and longitudinal voter sentiment mapping. A corpus of 1,847 political texts published between 1997 and 2022 was analysed alongside evidence from 14 Afrobarometer survey rounds, 6 IPSOS opinion polls, and selected campaign speeches. The coding process achieved a Cohen's kappa coefficient of 0.81 (p < .001), indicating strong inter-coder reliability. Findings show that references to Canaan increased from 3.2 mentions per 1,000 words in 1997 to 11.7 mentions per 1,000 words in 2017, representing a 266% increase in symbolic deployment. Public trust in Odinga's political vision remained resilient, increasing from 58% after the 2007 election to 61% after the 2017 election. The Joshua narrative emerged as the dominant theme, presenting the Canaan vision as an enduring promise that strengthened public confidence and sustained political commitment across successive election cycles. Regression analysis showed a positive association between rhetorical intensity and voter-base retention (β = 0.43, SE = 0.07, p < .001), although the relationship is interpreted as associative rather than causal. Following the 2018 Handshake, the Canaan metaphor evolved from a personalized opposition narrative into a broader democratic discourse, reflecting a symbolic shift in political meaning. The study concludes that, when viewed through an accounting lens, the Canaan metaphor displayed characteristics similar to an appreciating intangible asset whose symbolic value persisted over time. Rather than proposing the recognition of political narratives as financial assets, the Political Asset Valuation Framework (PAVF) provides an interdisciplinary framework for analyzing how political promises create, sustain, and transform stakeholder value. The findings extend the application of accounting concepts to political communication and offer useful insights for researchers, political communication scholars, governance practitioners, and policymakers seeking to understand how symbolic narratives shape public trust, legitimacy, and democratic engagement.
Lilian Mbatha· International journal of res...· 0 citations
Artificial intelligence is becoming an infrastructure of political communication rather than a discrete campaign tool. It affects how sustainability issues become visible, how publics are segmented, how institutions listen, and how political claims are verified. This article examines the relationship between artificial intelligence and the Sustainable Development Goals through a communication-centred perspective. A critical qualitative review and a comparative reading of institutional cases support a four-dimensional matrix based on visibility, voice, verifiability, and vulnerability. The analysis shows that automated systems can translate complex policy data into accessible narratives, support deliberation, and widen the reach of public communication. The same infrastructures can also fragment audiences, intensify political targeting, automate persuasive content, and erode trust through synthetic media and opaque moderation. Their democratic value therefore depends on disclosure, contestability, plural exposure, human oversight, and equitable access. Responsible governance should treat communication as a constitutive dimension of sustainable policy rather than a downstream exercise in dissemination.
Daniele Battista, Arthur Gugliucciello· European Scientific Journal· 0 citations
Governments push firms to internationalize not only through diplomacy and material incentives but also by shaping the environment in which investors, host governments, and local communities form judgments about cross-border opportunities. We conceptualize this process as
government-pushed internationalization
and examine how, in the Brazilian case (2003–2015), historical narratives became a central instrument for pursuing such strategies—and ultimately contributed to their failure. Drawing on a longitudinal historical case study of ProSAVANA, a flagship Brazilian agricultural cooperation scheme in Mozambique that eventually collapsed, we show how government-constructed narratives initially built broad support but also generated two strategic risks for enrolled firms:
backfiring
, as peripheral actors mobilized counter-narratives that transformed presumed advantages into liabilities, and
blinding
, a previously unidentified mechanism whereby reliance on historical narratives led policymakers to overlook institutional differences, alternative collective memories, and mounting risks. We reveal internationalization as a multi-stakeholder process in which diverse actors may contest official narratives and reframe opportunities as threats, thereby shaping the success or failure of government-pushed internationalization. We advance international business research by showing how governments use rhetorical history to enroll diverse stakeholders while explaining the risks such strategies create and why presumed historical advantages may ultimately become liabilities.
Unknown authors· Journal of International Bus...· 0 citations
It is argued that current benchmarking practices may perpetuate systematic harms affecting various actors in AI research, aligning with four of Iris Marion Young's theories of oppression and structural injustice.
Jason Branford, Angelie Kraft· 0 citations
We use cookies to run the site and, with your consent, for analytics and to show ads.
See our Cookie Policy.
