“Industry 4.0” and its own component “artificial intelligence” have been
discussed in recent years. Industry 4.0 refers to the fourth industrial
revolution. Governments, economists, managers, intellectuals, and consultants
celebrate it because it promises economic growth. This process means that everything will change. Therefore, some critical thinkers, like Fuchs (2018), are
skeptical of Industry 4.0 due to technological unemployment and its structural
crisis potential. In this context, in order to understand how Turkey deals with
this issue, it has been discussed how the Ministry of Industry and Technology
and the mainstream news media depict Industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence
matters. This study tries to explore the dominant discourses on Industry 4.0
topic through the tweets of both the ministry as a public agency and the news
media and aims to reveal the ideological approach concerning “Industry 4.0” by
analyzing the dominant/mainstream discourses on Twitter. The frequency
distribution of the relevant tweets, the tone of the tweets, and the main themes
of tweets on “Industry 4.0” and “artificial intelligence” have been analyzed by
the content analysis method. Thus, it has been revealed the discursive
expressions of the Ministry of Industry and Technology as a governmental agency
and the mainstream news media on Twitter and concluded that the dominant
rhetoric intensifies on the notion of a technological revolution, transformation,
and the positive consequences of AI in the various fields in human lives.
Hence, it has been ignored the critical public debates on this matter.
References
[1]
Asadollahi-Yazdi, E., Couzon, P., Nguyen, N. Q., Ouazene, Y., & Yalaoui, F. (2020). Industry 4.0: Revolution or Evolution? American Journal of Operations Research, 10, 241-268. https://doi.org/10.4236/ajor.2020.106014
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Brevini, B. (2021). Creating the Technological Saviour: Discourses on AI in Europe and the Legitimation of Super Capitalism. In P. Verdegem (Ed.), AI for Everyone? Critical Perspectives (pp. 145-159). University of Westminster Press.
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Dyer-Witheford, N., Kjosen, A., & Steinhoff, J. (2019). Conclusion: Communist AI. In Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism (pp. 145-162). Pluto Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvj4sxc6.9
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Fuchs, C. (2018). Industry 4.0: The Digital German Ideology. TripleC, 16, 280-289. https://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/1010
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