{"title":"The Infopolitics of feeling: How race and disability are configured in Emotion Recognition Technology","authors":"Kerry McInerney, Os Keyes","doi":"10.1177/14614448241235914","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we argue that facial emotion recognition technology (facial ERT) reproduces historical forms of pseudoscience based on the concept of quantifiable and unequally distributed emotional capacity. Drawing on Kyla Schuller’s Biopolitics of Feeling and Colin Koopman’s theory of infopower, we put forward the term ‘the infopolitics of feeling’ to describe how facial ERT encodes culturally ‘correct’ or normative forms of emotional expression that have historically been used to define and delineate what it means to be human. To make this argument, we provide a close reading of Girl Decoded, the autobiography of Rana el Kaliouby, the founder and former CEO of the leading Emotion artificial intelligence (AI) firm Affectiva. Girl Decoded, we argue pits el Kaliouby herself – portrayed as the empathetic, liberal, emotionally expressive and ideal ‘feeling’ subject – against two non-normative figures: the unfeeling autist and the inscrutable Oriental who must be ‘cured’ through Affectiva’s facial ERT.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"New Media & Society","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241235914","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In this article, we argue that facial emotion recognition technology (facial ERT) reproduces historical forms of pseudoscience based on the concept of quantifiable and unequally distributed emotional capacity. Drawing on Kyla Schuller’s Biopolitics of Feeling and Colin Koopman’s theory of infopower, we put forward the term ‘the infopolitics of feeling’ to describe how facial ERT encodes culturally ‘correct’ or normative forms of emotional expression that have historically been used to define and delineate what it means to be human. To make this argument, we provide a close reading of Girl Decoded, the autobiography of Rana el Kaliouby, the founder and former CEO of the leading Emotion artificial intelligence (AI) firm Affectiva. Girl Decoded, we argue pits el Kaliouby herself – portrayed as the empathetic, liberal, emotionally expressive and ideal ‘feeling’ subject – against two non-normative figures: the unfeeling autist and the inscrutable Oriental who must be ‘cured’ through Affectiva’s facial ERT.
期刊介绍:
New Media & Society engages in critical discussions of the key issues arising from the scale and speed of new media development, drawing on a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and on both theoretical and empirical research. The journal includes contributions on: -the individual and the social, the cultural and the political dimensions of new media -the global and local dimensions of the relationship between media and social change -contemporary as well as historical developments -the implications and impacts of, as well as the determinants and obstacles to, media change the relationship between theory, policy and practice.