• Projects

• Research Area 2

P8 | Health: Caring through ComAI

• Prof. Dr. Juliane Jarke

ComAI is increasingly presented as a solution to the care needs of an ageing population, particularly in the face of reduced funding for healthcare systems and a shortage of healthcare professionals. These technologies are also promoted as tools for “healthy ageing”, a policy objective aimed at enhancing the wellbeing of older adults. Within this framework, technology companies and policymakers create regimes of anticipation that ascribe various “care obligations” to ComAI including managing healthy aging, providing health information, and facilitating older adults’ access to healthcare services.

The project investigates how different groups of older adults (can) appropriate communicative AI. This is done using digital methods and conducting qualitative case studies in Austria, Germany, the UK and the USA.

Four research questions guide the project:

1. What regimes of anticipations by powerful actors such as technology companies, policy makers and healthcare managers about the care obligations of ComAI have emerged in the context of healthy ageing?
2. What types of hybrid healthcare figurations emerge in response to the aforementioned regimes of anticipation?
3. What (self-)care practices of older adults, their informal carers and healthcare workers emerge through, for and in opposition to ComAI?
4. How can we theorize the appropriation of ComAI for healthy ageing with a focus on the challenge of care?

PUBLICATIONS:

• Bischof, A., & Jarke, J. (2021). ‘Configuring the Older Adult: How Age and Ageing Are Re-Configured in Gerontechnology Design’. In Socio-gerontechnology: Interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Age-ing and Technology, edited by A. Peine, B. L. Marshall, W. Martin, and L. Neven. 197–212. Routledge.
• Hepp, A., Jarke, J., & Kramp, L. (Eds.) (2022a). New Perspectives in Critical Data Studies (pp. 1-23). Springer.
• Hepp, A., Loosen, W., Dreyer, S., Jarke, J., Kannengießer, S., Katzenbach, C., . . . Schulz, W. (2023). ChatGPT, LaMDA and the hype around Communicative AI. Human-Machine Communication, 6, 41-63. doi:10.30658/hmc.6.4
• Jarke, J. (2018). ‘Digitalisierung und Gesellschaft’. Soziologische Revue 41(1):3–20.
• Jarke, J. (2019). ‘Open Government for All? Co-Creating Digital Public Services for Older Adults through Data Walks’. Online Information Review 43(6):1003–20. doi: 10.1108/OIR-02-2018-0059.
• Jarke, J. (2021). Co-Creating Digital Public Services for an Ageing Society: Evidence for User-Centric Design.
• Jarke, J., & Gerhard, U. (2018). ‘Using Probes for Sharing (Tacit) Knowing in Participatory Design: Facilitating Perspective Making and Perspective Taking’. I-Com 17(2):137–52. doi: 10.1515/icom-2018-0014.
• Jarke, J., & Maaß, S. (2018). ‘Probes as Participatory Design Practice’. I-Com 17(2):99–102. doi: 10.1515/icom-2018-0026.
• Jarke, J., Prietl, B., Egbert, S., Boeva, Y., Heuer, H., & Arnold, M. (Eds.) (2024). Algorithmic Regimes: Methods, Interactions, Politics. Amsterdam University Press. doi: 10.5117/9789463728485
• Manchester, H., & Jarke, J. (2022). ‘Considering the Role of Material Gerontology in Reimagining Technology Design for Ageing Populations’. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life 15(2):181–213. doi: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3531
• Zakharova, I., & Jarke, J (2022). Educational technologies as matters of care. Learning, Media and Technology, 47(1), 95-108. doi: 10.1080/17439884.2021.2018605