The Future in the Technological Imagination of Mass Audiences: Analysis of Viewer Reviews of Science Fiction Films
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2026.5.3351Keywords:
artificial intelligence, future, techno-optimism, techno-skepticism, science fiction cinema, audience receptionAbstract
The article identifies dominant patterns in the perception of artificial intelligence in Russian-language audience discourse based on reviews of science fiction films and television series. The authors study the reception of screen representations of AI and the corresponding images of the technological future, distributed across techno-optimistic, techno-skeptical, and ambivalent interpretations. The research employs a two-stage design combining qualitative analysis of reviews through cognitive mapping with quantitative text mining of user-generated reviews published on the Kinopoisk platform. The empirical corpus includes 4,095 reviews of 38 films and series published between 2004 and 2025; automated processing identified 25,316 technology-relevant statements, of which 17,322 confidently classified units were retained after analytical verification. The findings demonstrate a pronounced predominance of techno-skeptical interpretations in Russian-language audience reception: 67.9% of statements belong to the skeptical pole and 32.1% to the optimistic one. Techno-optimism is represented mainly in two forms: a utilitarian model associated with comfort and the rationalization of everyday life, and an anthropological model based on the humanization of machines and the attribution of moral qualities to them. Techno-skepticism, in turn, evolves from anxiety about machine rebellion and human moral unpreparedness to create AI toward concerns about dehumanization, the erosion of interpersonal relations, the loss of autonomy, and the expansion of algorithmic control. The most significant conflict structures are related to the boundary between human and machine, the tension between creator and creation, and the opposition between autonomy and control. The authors conclude that the mass imagination of the technological future in Russian-language audience discourse is shaped predominantly by a cautious and critical perspective, while the image of AI functions not only as a figure of threat but also as a means of reflecting on human nature and social relations.
Acknowledgements. The study was funded by the Russian Science Foundation (RSF), project No. 25-28-03315.
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