Between Agents, Bots and Robotic Companions: The Challenge of Human Interaction and Social Relation in Times of Digital Networks and Data-Driven Communication

Abstract: 

Human interaction and social relationships have been an important issue and a challenge for people in everyday live and for social scientist and communication scholars to understand. In times of digital networks and data-driven communication, it seems even more complex and difficult to understand. Research has been focusing on either human relationships or the relation between humans and technology respectively information and communication technologies. The complex mediated environments we live in nowadays ask for an approach that is combining and integrating these two perspectives. In order to develop a conceptual framework that enables an integrative analysis, this contribution is combining theoretical concepts from communication sociology and social psychology. The focus is set on the enlargement and enrichment of interaction possibilities in mediated and networked everyday life. It is asked, in how far communication via and with digital agents, robotic entities and data driven services challenge our concepts of human communication, reciprocity and relating. On the other hand, the framework highlight aspects like situative absence and social isolations in digitalized live worlds. Hereby also, recent debates about privacy, surveillance capitalism (Zuboff 2019) and the commercialization of intimacy (Illouz 2018) are reflected.