New Lecture Series Explores Transformation and Pressure in Media and
Cultural Governance
The Media Governance and Industries Research Laboratory of the Department of Communication at
the University of Vienna, in collaboration with Webster Vienna Private University, recently launched
the public lecture series titled “Transformation and Pressure in Media and Cultural Governance.”
The inaugural talk by Dr. Giota Alevizou took place on 28 April 2026 at Webster Vienna Private
University. The event examined how artificial intelligence is reshaping the governance of knowledge.
The inaugural event was titled “From Wikipedia to ChatGPT: Knowledge, AI and Power.” Rather
than viewing AI as a sudden technological rupture, the talk situated AI within a longer historical
trajectory of encyclopaedic media, from Britannica to Wikipedia and today’s large language models
such as ChatGPT.
Drawing on her recently published book The Web of Knowledge (Polity, 2026), Dr. Alevizou argues
that AI represents a new regime of knowledge governance. Decisions about data, infrastructure and
authority have quietly reorganized who gets to produce, validate and circulate truth in the digital age.
By reframing encyclopedias as epistemic infrastructures, the lecture highlighted what is at stake
politically in the current AI moment: not only questions of accuracy or bias, but the very conditions
under which knowledge remains accountable, contestable and public.
The event opened with an address by Dr. Samuel R. Schubert, Chief Academic Officer of Webster
Vienna Private University, followed by an opening note from Univ. Prof. Dr. Katharine Sarikakis,
Director of the Media Governance and Industries Research Laboratory. A response to the talk was
presented by Dr. Nicole High-Steskal (Wikimedia Austria).
“Today, society is long on information and yet too often short on trust. Universities remain among the
last bastions of open, evidence-based debate, and WVPU is honoured to advance this conversation
with the University of Vienna and contribute to Vienna’s intellectual and civic life,”
said Dr. Schubert of WVPU.
Dr. Alevizou is the Co-Director of the Digital Futures MA programme, Digital Humanities and
Culture at King’s College London. Her research explores civic media, platforms, encyclopaedias and
emerging AI systems as key sites where authority, expertise and trust are negotiated.
“We tend to think of AI as something new. But the question of who gets to decide what counts as
knowledge is as old as the encyclopedia. What is new is the scale of the enclosure we are now
witnessing — and the urgency of the governance response it demands,” said Dr. Alevizou.
“The most important questions about AI are not technical. They are about power: who owns
knowledge, who produces it, and who bears the cost when the infrastructure of knowing is
reorganised without consent. That is, I’d say, the conversation this series is built for.”
At a time when Europe and the world face changes and crises of unprecedented scale, this series will
focus on today’s most pressing challenges: the rise of techno-authoritarianism, advancement and
automatization of the military-industrial complex, monopolization in the media and cultural sector and
state-facilitated undermining of artistic freedom and freedom of expression.
“This is a space for serious engagement with governance as a structural problem, aiming to bring
together academic, policy and cultural actors working at the forefront of these transformations,”
Dr. Katharine Sarikakis said.
This inaugural lecture offered a critical perspective on how knowledge is structured, controlled and
contested in an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence.
For event details click HERE.
