The team was invited to present their research at the ESA conference, taking place in Warsaw, Poland, on 25-28th of August 2026. The early-career scholars will discuss findings from their individual PhD projects addressing key questions of digital transformation and its social implications.
Pauline Reitzer will hold the presentation “Prompting for the Public Mission – How Journalists Domesticate Models” in the Sociology of Communications and Media Research Network. The paper analyses how journalistic work in public service media shapes and is shaped by AI tools through prompting practices.
Irina Bănoiu will hold the presentation “Representation and Resistance: When Queer Visibility Meets Platform Power” in the Sexuality Research Network. The paper investigates how social media platforms influence the (in)visibility of queer individuals and the strategies they adopt for digital self-presentation.
Nuoyi Wang will hold the presentation “The Discursive Politics of "AI agents": How Alibaba, Amazon, ByteDance, and OpenAI Frame Agent-related Offerings towards AI Controversies” in the Science and Technology Research Network. The paper examines how major U.S. and Chinese tech firms communicate and negotiate their positions on AI agents across multiple stakeholder groups.
In addition, together with the group leader Laura Wiesböck, the DigiTrans team will present their joint paper “Towards a Novel Framework of Attention-Exploiting Digital Platforms” in the “Sociology of Communications and Media Research Network”. The paper introduces a theoretical perspective on how digital platform companies cultivate user dependencies.
The invitation for all junior researchers as well as the group to present their work highlights the group’s role in advancing sociological research on digital societies and contributing to international debates on the societal impact of emerging technologies.