Panelists: Gerard Goggin, Vance Ricks, and Laura Forlano

Description: Artificial intelligence is often discussed as a technical achievement—algorithms, datasets, and computational power. But what happens when we shift our perspective and treat AI not just as a tool, but as a medium itself? This webinar explores AI as a cultural and social force that shapes how we communicate, create meaning, and experience the world. Just as television and the internet became mediums that transformed society beyond their technical specifications, AI is emerging as something that mediates our relationships, structures our information environments, and influences how stories are told and consumed. By understanding AI as media rather than merely tools, we can better grasp its implications for democracy, policy, and culture, moving beyond technical capabilities to critical questions about who controls these systems, whose voices they amplify, and how they’re reshaping communication itself.

This event is part of the Center for Transformative Media’s AI Webinar Series.

Speaker Bios:

Laura Forlano, a Fulbright award-winning and National Science Foundation funded scholar, is a disabled writer, social scientist and design researcher. She is Professor in the departments of Art + Design and Communication Studies in the College of Arts, Media, and Design and Distinguished Senior Fellow at The Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University. Forlano is also an Affiliated Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. She received her Ph.D. in communications from Columbia University.

Gerard Goggin is an internationally renowned scholar in communication, cultural, and media studies, whose pioneering research on the cultural and social dynamics of digital technology has been widely influential. He has held appointments at the University of Sydney, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, University of NSW, and the University of Queensland. Goggin has made benchmark contributions to the understanding of mobile media and communication, national and international Internets and their histories.

Vance Ricks is a Teaching Professor at Northeastern holding joint appointments in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH) and Khoury College of Computer Sciences. Ricks earned his doctorate in philosophy from Stanford University. Before joining Northeastern, Ricks was an associate professor of philosophy at Guilford College. He has published on parasociality and on the implications of social networks for friendship and for gossip. He has co-authored publications on autonomous vehicles and on faculty policies regarding the use of generative AI systems. His teaching and research focus on technology and moral philosophy broadly speaking.