"This book offers six critical, interdisciplinary approaches to AI-generated images. It invites the reader to (re-)imagine relationships between artefacts and media, authorship and agency, creativity and commodification, representation, and visual style. Across the chapters, the book examines three ... realities of AI images, from sociotechnical fabrics, through semiotic interfaces, to representations and aesthetics. Drawing on media studies, philosophy of technology, multimodality studies, critical AI studies, and visual communication studies, the book pursues the following interconnected topics: (1) addressing pataphysical and sociomaterial engagements with AI image making, (2) theorizing distributed and probabilistic forms of agency through the concept of vector agency, (3) analysing interfaces and affordances of visual generative AI via multimodal walkthroughs, (4) conceptualising prompting as a cultural practice that reshapes agency, (5) mapping representational patterns and emerging visual genres in AI-generated imagery, and (6) interrogating how visual AI styles are co-produced by machines, users, and generative platform politics. These six critical lenses offer complementary perspectives to understanding the complex ecosystem surrounding AI image production." (Publisher description) more

"This book explores visual political engagement online – how citizens participate in the dynamism of life in society by expressing their opinions and emotions on various issues of democratic life in image-based social media posts, independent of collective actions. Looking beyond large digital soc ... ial movements to focus on the everyday, the book provides a well-documented and comprehensive framework of key notions, concrete methods and examples of empirical insights into everyday visual citizenship on social media. It shows how the visual has become ubiquitous in citizens’ communication on social media, focusing on how citizens use visual content to express their emotions and opinions on social media platforms when they discuss politics in a large sense." (Publisher description) more