{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,2]],"date-time":"2026-04-02T15:23:24Z","timestamp":1775143404970,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":40,"publisher":"SAGE Publications","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,16]],"date-time":"2025-10-16T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1760572800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,16]],"date-time":"2025-10-16T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1760572800000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/page\/policies\/text-and-data-mining-license"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100000268","name":"Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["ES\/V013599\/1"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["ES\/V013599\/1"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100000268","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["journals.sagepub.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Big Data &amp; Society"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,12]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>Do public controversies about AI matter? Can they really make a difference to how AI is taken up or imposed on society? This introduction to the Special Issue on Analysing Articifial Intelligence Controversies (?) discusses how the contributing articles and commentaries address this question through original research and critical reflection. We argue that AI presents a watershed moment for the analysis of public controversies about science and technology insofar as AI controversies today often serve as occasions for the demonstration of techno-scientific authority and the reassertion of hierarchies between expert and lay, which challenges the framing of controversy as a force of democratisation in Science &amp; Technology Studies. We discuss how this technopolitical context compels us to investigate anew the relations between AI controversies and the situations\u2014the underlying tensions, disputes and frictions in society\u2014to which these controversies are relevant, or alleged to be relevant. We identify four different modalities in which AI controversies operate on social and political situations: (1) The controversy conceals the situation. (2) The controversy articulates the situation. (3) The situation articulates the controversy. (4) The controversy and the situation are mutually irrelevant. We draw on the contributions to the Special Theme to develop a typology of these four modalities and discuss how these contributions themselves address the wider challenge of controversy as a force of \u201cauthoritanization\u201d by reworking the concepts and methods of Controversy Analysis and by critically investigating, evaluating and reflecting on AI controversies of the last 10 years.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/20539517251383870","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,16]],"date-time":"2025-10-16T20:58:05Z","timestamp":1760648285000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["On the controversiality of AI: The controversy is not the situation"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"12","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8237-6946","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Noortje","family":"Marres","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Warwick"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1897-2783","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Christian","family":"Katzenbach","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Centre for Media Communication and Information Research, University of Bremen"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5542-3065","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Anders Kristian","family":"Munk","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Section for Human-Centred Innovation, DTU Management, Technical University Denmark"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4649-7812","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Anna","family":"Jobin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Human-centred Interaction Science and Technology, University of Fribourg"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_4_2_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1215\/9780822373377"},{"key":"e_1_3_4_3_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1177\/0263276420958043"},{"key":"e_1_3_4_4_1","volume-title":"On the dangers of stochastic parrots: Can language models be too big?Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency","author":"Bender EM","unstructured":"Bender EM, Gebru T, McMillan-Major A, et al. 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