Framing AI & Sustainability
Researchers Involved
research areas
timeframe
2025 - 2025
contact
mgrollerson@gmail.com
Framing AI & Sustainability
The three-month fellowship project, from April to June 2025, with Megan Rollerson (MSc), explored the contradictory discourses surrounding the sustainable digitalization of artificial intelligence (AI).
While AI is often promoted as a solution to global sustainability challenges—enabling greater efficiency and innovation—it simultaneously raises concerns about energy consumption, computing power, and carbon emissions associated with training large models. From a strategic communication perspective, the project investigates how leading technology companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and OpenAI frame the relationship between AI, digital transformation, and environmental responsibility. Using Framing Theory and Critical Theory as conceptual lenses, it examines how corporate narratives shape public understanding and may influence emerging regulatory debates.
Methodologically, the project combines a discourse analysis of corporate communication (press releases, reports, and social media posts) with a representative online survey in Switzerland to capture public perceptions of corporate frames and media frames of AI and sustainability and its influencing factors.
The fellowship aims to advance knowledge about how persuasive communication shapes societal perceptions of AI’s sustainability, providing insights to foster more responsible and transparent digitalization. Results will be discussed at an interdisciplinary panel event at the DSI with scholars and practitioners.
DSI Fellow: Megan Rollerson
Megan Rollerson holds an M.Sc. in Strategic Communication from Lund University and is a recipient of the EUPRERA Master’s Thesis Award for Excellence/Theoretical Impact for her outstanding research on the communication of trustworthiness in autonomous systems and artificial intelligence (AI).
As a DSI Fellow in the Community Sustainability (April–June 2025), Megan collaborated with Prof. Nadine Strauß to explore how leading technology corporations frame the environmental impact of AI. Her project analyzes the dichotomous discourses surrounding the sustainable digitalization of AI—balancing its promised efficiencies with concerns about energy consumption and carbon emissions.
Her research combines Framing Theory and Critical Theory to examine how strategic corporate messaging shapes public perceptions and regulatory debates on AI and sustainability, contributing to a deeper understanding of responsible and transparent digital transformation.