POLITICAL COMMUNICATIVE AGENTS
PERSUASION AND COMPUTER SCIENCES
Guilherme Fráguas Nobre
Communication Science-Technology Institute
São Paulo (SP), Brazil
guilherme@comscitech.org
ABSTRACT
This article presents an overview of literature concerning the
interface between communication sciences and computer
sciences. The author reports on how persuasion has been
worked by artificial agents in political contexts. He introduces
the hardwired and the softwired versions of persuasive features,
then he presents the persuasive and nonpersuasive artificial
agents, and he also describes how communication theories and
theorists have been computationally modeled. A discussion of
the linkage between political artifacts and artifact politics
(specially to political videogames), as well as artificial
persuasive agents involved in politics is included.
Keywords: communication modelling, artificial
communication, artificial communicators, robotic politicians,
artificial agents politics.
INTRODUCTION
This paper is an overview of literature concerning the interface
between communication sciences and computer sciences. In so
doing, I wish to show how persuasion has been worked by
artificial agents in a political context. Here, computers are not
only a tool or media, they are conceived as social actors as well
[21]. Specifically, as artificial communicators to political
interactions. That is why I seek computational approaches to
communication and communicators. So, this paper looks into
the relationship between computer sciences and communication,
politics and persuasion, on one hand; and artificial agents,
politics and persuasion, on the other.
This is the gist of my research on artificial agents that they are
capable of persuading people (thorough communication) about
political issues. Here, the potential role to be played by
communication sciences is significant, not least because
persuasion is a type of communication [25]. I believe that
communication sciences’ theories and authors can help to
develop applicable computational models and systems in
politics, for example artificial communicative agents “acting” as
politicians.
The structure of this paper is as follows. In section 1, the
hardwired as well the softwired versions of persuasive features
are introduced. In section 2, the artificial agents – persuasive
and non-persuasive are presented. Section 3 describes how
communication theories and theorists have been
computationally modeled. In section 4, I discuss the linkage
between political artifacts and artifact politics. In section 5, I
approach artificial agents involved in politics as both persuasive
regular appliance and persuasive human-like feature. The last
sections are dedicated to remarks and conclusions.
1.
There are basically two approaches relating computer sciences
and persuasion: one deals with hardwired persuasive features
[14], the other deals with softwired persuasive features. The
hardwired approach is better represented by the so-called
Persuasive Technology [32], which focuses mainly on the
interface’s persuasive power. The softwired approach is
concerned rather with the theories, models, programming and
evaluation of software systems designed to persuade. However,
even an interface has a degree of softwireness and vice-versa.
1.1 Persuasive Technologies
The study of computers as persuasive technology is named
“captology” [21]. The main idea behind captology is that
computer devices, systems and applications can change human
behavior or attitude in a predetermined way. In fact, we can find
a lot of terms which are used to indicate computational power
over people: computers can change, influence, promote, induce,
motivate, encourage, persuade and improve human behavior or
attitude. Some examples of these hardwired technologies
include Baby Think It Over, a computerized doll which tries to
discourage teen pregnancy by simulating the parenthood
experience [12], Hygiene Guard, a system to induce hand-
washing after bathroom use at the workplace [32] and
Scorecard, a website that promotes environmental protection by
giving information on pollution at local level [16]. The ethics of
this persuasive technology can be verified in [4].
1.2 Computational Issues
Some authors try to model persuasion from a computational
point of view. They must define not only the concepts
themselves, but also the processes by which the concepts can be
made computationally approachable. Hence, they need a model
of persuasion, a model of persuader [40], a model of persuadee,
a model of interaction, a model of environment or context and a
model of evaluation. The model of persuasion gives the object
of persuasion (behavior [59], attitude, emotional state, cognitive
state [25], or mental state [24]). The BDI&E approach (belief-
desire-intention-emotion) can be used to model both persuader
and persuadee [14]. A model of interaction must consider the
dynamics of strategies and goals [48], and must be error-
tolerant. A model of environment is about knowledge base and
cognitive aspects, but is also about social context
(commitments, authority and power). Finally, a model of
evaluation will show whether the persuasion was effective or
not, establishing how to measure success or failure [20].
2. PERSUASION AND ARTIFICIAL AGENTS
Persuasion has been identified as a human skill, a quality of
intelligent and creative beings. Nonetheless, recent research
proposes advances both in the field of artificial agents (beings)
and in persuasion modelling and programming. The union of
these two streams leads us to a new challenge: to conceive and
build artificial persuasive agents which interact with humans. In
this sense, it will be necessary to model and program sociability
into those artificial agents [11], by taking into account that such
beings may get abusive.
2.1 Artificial Agents
Artificial agents are becoming pervasive. They are found in
shopping or entertainment environments, but also playing the
role of assistant, guide, most of the time at virtual sites. The
basic idea is to create programs that emulate certain aspects of
human capabilities, behavior or figure in an effective way.
Some of these agents have some reference to the human body,
for example a face, arms, legs – even if they are sometimes
depicted in a unrealistic way (eg. in cartoon [39]). Others have a
real physical body, like some robots and humanoids – even if
sometimes their bodies do not take a human form. These
hardware-software systems are created to perform tasks
automatically, and they are becoming increasingly autonomous,
proactive, communicative, persuasive, empathetic, adaptive,
charismatic, empowered, affective. Soon, they will be creative
as well.
2.2 Artificial Persuasive Agents
Some researchers are developing artificial agents with
persuasive capabilities. In order to reach this goal such agents
must, for example, understand the user’s situation and possess
an opinion about his cognitive state, reason on the effectiveness
of the messages [25], be capable of personalization and
personification, become a source of trust and be socially
competent. The majority of these studies are e-commerce
related, with some exceptions in health [20] or in sociability. As
one might expect, their persuasive abilities are effective to the
extent that their buying recommendation was accepted [58],
people shifted their impression about themselves and about their
partners [42] and people adjusted their attitudes and behavior
[29]. Some works concerned with the ethical issues of these
persuasive agents can also be found. They usually focus on how
to program ethical norms, reasoning and behavior in artificial
persuasive agents.
3. COMMUNICATION AND COMPUTER SCIENCES
In computer sciences, communication has been understood as
synonymous with interaction, relationship, dialogue,
conversation. In such a framework, it is sometimes difficult to
perceive the difference between communication and
argumentation, rhetoric, persuasion, bargaining and
recommendation. I believe that a closer cooperation between
communication sciences and computer sciences could both
clarify and enrich some useful concepts in both fields. The
research tradition in communication sciences could help with
certain metaphors with which to develop viable models.
3.1 Modelling Communication
Certain authors have been working with computer simulations
of communication emergence and evolution [33]. Sometimes
they use a software simulation, at other times they prefer
physically embodied devices [43]. In any case, the computer-
robot simulation research shows that communication arises
spontaneously and evolves to become an effective tool to solve
particular social tasks. The most remarkable is that the systems
were not at all equipped with a specific drive for
communication, this had to be learnt. This process can be called
evolutionary robotics (agents), since it is based on a biolike
algorithm – eg. Lamarkian or Darwinian. This artificial
communication could help to understand natural
communication, given that communication modelling and
programming is still an open field to communication sciences.
3.2 Multimodal-Natural Communication
As stated elsewhere, communication should not be restricted to
words and sentences, rather it should be an activity of the whole
body [55]. To communicate, agents (humans or artificial) must
use speech, gestures and the haptic; they will need their hands,
face, legs, feet, and their gaze, head nods, eye blinking and torso
orientation; even their skin. In short, in order to communicate
one needs multimodal ways of expression. But agents must also
be able to couple these modalities harmoniously. Efforts are
being made to make artificial-multimodal communication more
natural, that is, more human-like [5]; but the majority of authors
work with the natureness of one modality at a time, for example
text [54] or speech [47] in the language communication
modality. So, it is easier to find papers where natural is
associated with language than papers where natural is
associated with multimodal; hence it is easier to find the
expression natural language communication [31] than the
expression natural multimodal communication.
3.3 Modelling Communication Authors
As far as we know, it is not usual to apply communication
theories and authors to modelling and programming computer
systems. I am referring to applications originating in the field of
communication sciences. However, some efforts in this
direction can be found, mostly in the field of computer sciences.
Some authors referred to by Histoires des Théories de la
Communication [37], are worth citing: Bourdieu, Habermas,
Peirce, Saussure, Shannon, Wiener. Grice [53] and Searle
deserve to be added to this list.
Habermas’ theory of meaning was applied to the Multi-Agents
Systems in [62], while his theory of communicative action was
used to avoid and/or overcome communication problems in a
cooperative documentation system in [66]. Shannon’s entropy
concept was proposed as a guide to discovering new drugs
targets in [60]. Saussure’s theory of communication was
employed to program evolving artificial agents in [63] and [67].
Bourdieu’s habitus theory was modelled in [61] and applied to
artificial socially competent agents in [65]. The relevance of
Peirce’s theory of communication to computer sciences was
analyzed in [64]. Grice’s communication maxims were cited in
several papers.
4. POLITICS AND COMPUTER SCIENCES
Computers and other artifacts can be political in at least two
ways: they can embody the power of a person or group (S1), or
they can enact some sort of power for a person or group (S2).
Langdon Winner alignes himself more with the first statement
(S1), that is, in the embodied argument. The persuasive
technology authors are better placed in the second statement
(S2). However, even Winner’s power embodiment must have an
expressive instance to achieve its goal, and even the power
performance via computer must present some degree of
embodiment (as a language, for example).
4.1 Political Artifacts
The main proposition of Winner is this: technical things have
political qualities. This means that machines, structures and
systems of a material culture can embody specific forms of
power and authority, which are always the power, authority and
privilege of some people over others. To Winner, some artifacts
can be deliberately designed to achieve a particular social effect
[56]. He defines the politics of one group or nation as the way in
which they embody their power and authority in (cultural)
artifacts [57]. In consequence, one could establish a link
between the regular politics of a community and its
technological politics. This seems to be close to the Frankfurt
School studies on communication, which regard cultural
products and power as bonded [37]. One may argue that this
way of looking is a harder version of the hardwired features in
persuasive technology. Nonetheless, Winner’s position is
critiqued in [28]. In this critique, Winner’s statement is taken as
being the political artifact. His words in and of themselves (not
the things referred by his words) have political qualities. I posit
that in some way, to both authors, things, including bridges and
other built artifacts, are like words.
4.2 Artifact Politics
The use of technological artifacts in politics is not new. Press,
radio, television, telephone (including mobiles), and computers
- every support or channel has been exploited as far as possible.
Nowadays you can find computer-based systems specially
designed to improve one or several aspects of the political
relationship, for example; e-democracy, e-govern, e-party, e-
debate, e-vote, e-participation, e-citizenship. Furthermore,
computers have been used for simulations in political sciences
and sociology. Thus, there are systems designed to interact
with/for people (helping and serving in political matters), and
systems conceived to (inter)act as people (simulating individual
and group political behavior or attitudes). For example,
intelligent agents are applied to simulate people participation in
virtual communities in [41]. A tool to deliver better government
via e-services for political parties is sketched in [10]. A
structure to promote informed public debate can be found in [2].
Robots that simulate political ideologies and make political
coalitions, and vote to elect a party are explored in [48]. New
computational techniques for improving communication
between public administration and citizens and to increase
citizen’s participation in the decision-making process are
explored in [13].
4.3 Political Persuasive Games
The development of persuasive games is another excellent
example of technological artifacts to be applied in politics.
These serious games, or videogames with an agenda, seek to
persuade people to sign a petition, vote for a candidate, or to
participate in a campaign. Several games have been developed
to carry political messages, make political statement, bolster
political campaign (9), help political parties, do political
simulations, educate voters (30), to engage voters, and to
persuade players on political issues and actions. Videogames
are seen as an odd tool (49) or media (6) to explain complex
political concepts and processes in a fun and interactive way,
and to reach the players' understand of big ideas (34) by
embodying experiences of public policy or geopolitics (51) for
example. Some authors claim these technological artifacts can
persuade voters to change their minds (23), while others are
skeptical about this. In any case, videogames do have political
impact (8) and are capable of political persuasion too. Political
games to mobile persuasion devices are discussed in (7). The
games' themes are generally about elections, campaigning,
parties, civil rights, public policy, and external affairs (like
war). Some of these videogames were cited in a political
communication context (17).
5. POLITICAL ARTIFICIAL AGENTS
I have been looking for embodied artificial agents which are
capable of persuading people (through communication) about
political issues. These very special political artifacts must do
politics by themselves, so they are supposed to be autonomous
artifact politics. As a matter of fact, they are intended to be
politician artifacts, for example: e-politician, e-citizen, e-deputy,
e-candidate, e-elector, e-campaign assistant. In sum,
autonomous, intelligent, proactive, adaptive, evolving, creative,
communicative systems that can reason, argue, bargain and
debate about political subjects in order to persuade people are
becoming more and more realistic. We can go further and
imagine androids [46] and humanoids [59] as politician
artifacts, performing emotions, humor, politeness, flattery and
becoming more natural, human-like and life-like.
5.1 Political Artificial Technologies
One special case of technological artifacts that can be used in
politics is the persuasive one. We are not simply referring to
simulation systems, but rather to developing multimodal
embodied human-like systems – as sketched in a non-specific
political reference in [59]. In this sense, the goal could be, for
example, to build artificial agents designed to persuade people
to agree with or support a particular political issue. Politics is a
good application for persuasive technology because it has
economies of scale, it allows personalization of abstract policy
details, and it reduces several barriers to communication – as
reasoned by [35].
Another example of a system designed to persuade at political
interaction is presented by [2, 3]. These authors programmed a
debate system capable of reasoning and argumentation. The
prototype was developed to serve (hypothetically speaking) the
UK government in its decision on whether to invade Iraq. By
modelling the government’s and audiences’ points of view, the
authors tried to preview and to control for all the possibilities of
the debate, the pros and cons for each argument and their
various justifications. Interestingly, any statement was able to
be questioned – even the government’s. To counterpoint this
pro-government system, the PERSUADER generates proposals
and tries to persuade all parties involved (not only the public),
by generating threatening arguments to convince people to
accept them [52].
5.2 Politician Agents
My goal has been to research political communicative agents,
meaning artificial agents with the capability to interact with and
persuade people about political issues through multimodal-
natural communication. This includes, among others, embodied
agents trying to convince people over a wide range of political
subjects, including civil participation on city planning and
administration, electoral activism, private or public health and
health care measures, security policy, environmentally friendly
knowledge and behavior, social lies and group exchange. While
some authors preferred to stay at a conceptual level, others tried
to use their models in a more applied sense. Possibly, the first
political robot was imagined in [27], which was a robot
conceived to maximize power via discussion and
argumentation. A virtual citizen was effectively used in [39] to
promote a political campaign to the city of Issy-les-Moulineaux.
This artificial politician was created to establish a friendly
relationship with other citizens, to persuade people to vote in
the municipal elections, and to promote citizenship and the city.
The use of an embodied-interactive-artificial agent (capable of
expressing emotions) to persuade people to vote is a good
example of this research’s potential. At a lower level of
technical complexity, two artificial candidates for the
presidential elections are related in [44]: one, Duke in United
States’ 2000 election; the other, Feliciano Brasileiro in Brazil’s
2002 election.
5.3 Politician Agents Qualities
There is a significant number of myths concerning politicians’
qualities: the general public use to think that they lie a lot, that
they simulate emotions and friendship, that they are ready to
promise the best and to threat the worst, that they use humor
and flattery to encourage proximity and to further trust. In this
sense, there is some research which could help in an eventual
effort to build a more natural artificial politician. One can find a
computational approach to lying in [15]. These authors argue
that some situations exist where it will be understandable,
acceptable and even desirable to have a lying machine. Humor
is an important way of influencing the mental state of people
according to [50], and there are already international scientific
meetings dedicated specifically to computational humor (see
TWLT and Humor).
The use of promises and threats by persuasive computational
systems is treated in [26], while [52] works with computational
persuasive threatening. The impact of computational flattery
and praise was studied in [22]. The remarkable finding of this
research is that computational flattery works effectively over
people. The computational approach to emotions can be found
in [38], and some of these studies deal precisely with the use of
emotions in a persuasive context. In particular, [1] also
approaches the use of politeness to improve the user’s affective
state; an agent even capable of asking for an apology. A
computational model of trust is presented in [36].
REMARKS
A political robot and a robotic politician are now closer
realities. Two interesting projects are presented in [46]:
Mary101 and Repliee Q1. The Mary101 is a system which
creates visual speech animations. In Mary101, a person (perhaps
Bill Clinton or Al Gore?) “can be made to convincingly say
anything that the video creator desires”. So his/her
videorealistic images could be taken as a robotic feature ready
for political uses in hardwired-softwired persuasive
technologies. The Repliee Q1 is a visually convincing android
created at Osaka University and is a 3D bodyrealistic example
of a robot equally usable with political aims. Imagine the
Clinton101 or the Gore101, and the Clintoon Q1 or the Goree
Q1. That is why we can imagine a Billbot or an Obamabot
(robotic versions referred to Bill Clinton and to Barak Obama in
[19]); or a Robotican or a Democrobot (robotic political devices
aligned to the Republican and Democratic US parties in [19]).
To apply Habermas’ ideal speech community [18] even further,
all voices can get a hearing, even the robotic ones; the best
arguments are brought to bear, including the automatically
treated ones; the only force allowed is that of a better argument,
and persuasive technologies can calculate different forces for
better arguments. In sum, building artificial agents to interact
politically with people is a challenging research field.
CONCLUSIONS
There are already some examples of artificial agents applied to
politics, but there seems to be something missing in the
conceptual treatment of political aspects (with maybe an
exception to [48]). Current research is understandably more
focused on system architecture and building – that is, the
computational side. Understandably because almost all papers
have been originated from computational scientists and/or
departments. This problem remains when one moves to the
conceptual treatment of communicational aspects.
Communication is sometimes viewed as an omitted or
presupposed variable, at other times it is only perceived as a
synonym of language (natural or artificial) – take the automated
treatment of natural language research for example. In this
sense, it will be better to start thinking about automated
treatment of multimodal-natural communication! It is worth
noting that some computer scientists pointed out the need to
consult previous communication research for their persuasion
approach, e.g. see [16, 21]. Thus, it will be interesting to widen
this tendency by consulting more the communication sciences in
order to work with artificial communicative agents in computer
sciences. I believe that a political communication background,
closely linked to the subject of this paper, could really improve
research on political communicative agents designed to
persuade1. Indeed it is time not only to bring Bourdieu,
Habermas and Peirce into research on artificial communicative
agents, but also to bring the political communication authors
and theories to the artificial politician agents research field.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] E. André; M. Rehm. Emotions and Politeness. In:
HUMAINE. Report on Basic Cues and Open Research
Topics in Communication and Emotions, 11 October 2004.
[2] K. Atkinson. Computational Support for Public Debate
and Policy Justification. In: A. Grönlund et alii (eds)
Electronic Government. Communications Proceedings of
the Fifth International Conference on eGovernment,
Krakow, Poland, 2006.
[3] K. Atkinson; T. Bench-Capon; P. McBurney. Persuasive
Political Argument. In: F. Grasso. et alii (edts)
Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on
Computational Models of Natural Argument, Edinburgh,
Scotland, 2005.
[4] D. Berdichevsky; E. Neuenschwander. Toward an Ethics
of Persuasive Technology, Communications of the ACM,
42(5), 1999.
[5] R. Bischoff; T. Jain. Natural Communication and
Interaction with Humanoid Robots. In: Second IEEE
International Symposium on Humanoid Robots, Tokyo,
1999.
[6] G. Bluestein. Educators Put Politics into Video Games.
In: USA Today, 1/22/2007.
1
To multimodal political communication, see [45].
[7] I. Bogost. Persuasive Games on Mobile Devices. In: B.J.
Fogg,; D. Eckles (edts). Mobile Persuasion: 20
Perspectives on the Future of Behavior Change, Stanford
Captology Media, 2007.
[8] I. Bogost. Playing Politics: Videogames for Politics,
Activism and Advocacy. In: First Monday. Command
Lines: The Emergence of Governance in Global
Cyberspace, v. 11, n. 9, special issue 7, September 2006.
[9] I. Bogost. Frame and Metaphor in Political Games. In:
Digital Games Research Conference. Changing Views:
Worlds in Play, Vancouver, Canada, June 16-20, 2005.
[10] C. Bouras et alii. A Unified Framework For Political
Parties to Support E-Democracy Practices, IADIS
International Conference, WWW/Internet 2005, Lisbon,
Portugal, 2005.
[11] C. Breazeal; B. Scassellati. How to Build Robots that
Make Friends and Influence People, IROS99, Kyonjiu,
Korea, 1999.
[12] V. D. Canaday. Persuasive Technology and Emotional
Agents, Technical Report, Norfolk State University, 2004.
[13] M. Carenini, et alii. Improving Communication in E-
democracy Using Natural Language Processing, IEEE
Intelligent Systems, Volume 22, Issue 1, January 2007.
[14] V. Carofiglio et alii. Persuasion: Computational Issues.
In: HUMAINE. Report on Basic Cues and Open Research
Topics in Communication and Emotions, 11 October 2004.
[15] C. Castelfranchi. Artificial Liars: Why Computers Will
(Necessarily) Deceive Us and Each Other. In: Ethics and
Information Technology, Vol. 2, Issue 2, 2000.
[16] R. Cheng. Persuasion Strategies for Computers as
Persuasive Technologies. Department of Computer
Science, University of Saskatchewan, n/d.
[17] M. Erard. In These Games, the Points Are All Political.
In: New York Times, July 1, 2004.
[18] C. Ess. The Political Computer: Democracy, CMC and
Habermas. In: C. Ess (ed). Philosophical Perspective on
Computer Mediated Communication, Albany, State
University of New York Press, 1996.
[19] Fakeconsultant. On Evolution, Or, Political Robots
Compared. [Online], available:
http://fakeconsultant.blogspot.com/2007/08/on-evolution-
or-political-robots.html
[20] D. Field; F. Grasso. ELIZA, but Cleverer: Designing
Persuasive Artificial Agents. In: H. Horacek; I. Kruijff-
Korbayova. (eds) Advanced Topics in Modeling Natural
Language Dialog Workshop, Vienna, Austria, 2004.
[21] B. J. Fogg. Persuasive Computers: Perspectives and
research directions. In: Proceedings of the CH198,
Conference of the ACM/SIGCHI, New York: ACM Press,
1998.
[22] B. J. Fogg; C. Nass. Silicon Sycophants: the Effects of
Computers that Flatter. In: International Journal of
Human-Computer Studies, Vol. 46, Issue 5, 1997.
[23] A. L. Foster. Video Games with a Political Message. In:
The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 29, 2004.
[24] M. Guerini et alii. Persuasion: Definition and Human
Sciences Approaches. In: HUMAINE. Report on Basic
Cues and Open Research Topics in Communication and
Emotions, 2004.
[25] M. Guerini et alii. Persuasion Models for Intelligent
Interfaces, Proceedings of the IJCAI Workshop on
Computational Models of Natural Argument, Acapulco,
Mexico, 2003.
[26] M. Guerini; C. Castelfranchi. Promises and Threats in
Persuasion, Proceedings of the ECAI, Workshop on
Computational Models of Natural Argument, Riva del
Garda, 2006.
[27] M. Hogan. Auto-Political Activist. In: RoboPolis 2000,
University of Colorado, Department of Political Science,
Politics and Language, 2000.
[28] B. Joerges. Do Politics Have Artefacts? In: Social Studies
of Science, 29 (3), 1999.
[29] Y. Katagiri et alii. Social Persuasion in Human-Agent
Interaction. Workshop on Knowledge and Reasoning in
Practical Dialogue Systems, Seattle, 2001.
[30] K. Kaye. Political Sims: Interactive Games Do Serious
Politics. In: Personal Democracy Forum, 03/31/2005.
[31] C. Kemke. Natural Language Communication between
Human and Artificial Agents. In: Zhon-Zhi Shi (ed.)
Agent Computing and Multi-Agent Systems: Pacific Rim
International Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems, Guilin,
China, 2006.
[32] P. King; J. Tester. The Landscape of Persuasive
Technologies, Communications of ACM, Vol. 42, 1999.
[33] H. Lipson. Evolutionary Robotics: Emergence of
Communication, Current Biology, Vol. 17, No 9, 2007.
[34] T. Loftus. Skip the Speech and Play the Policy - New
Political Games Aim to Persuade, Not Just Entertain. In:
MSNBC, Oct. 18, 2004.
[35] J. Loomis; P. Solderitsch. Politics and Persuasive
Technology, 2003. [Online], available:
http://www.grammar-rodeo.net/portfolio/captology/handout.pdf
[36] J. Masthoff. Computationally Modelling Trust: An
Exploration. In: Proceedings of the SociUM workshop
associated with the User Modeling conference, Corfu,
Greece, 2007.
[37] A. Mattelart; M. Mattelart. Histoire des Théories de la
Communication, La Decouverte, 3e Éd., Paris, 2004.
[38] M. Miceli et alii. Emotional and Non-Emotional
Persuasion. In: HUMAINE. Proceedings of the WP8
Workshop “Emotion in Communication”, ITC-Irst Povo,
Trento, Italy, 2005.
[39] B. Morel. Cantoche Exemplar Proposal, In: HUMAINE.
Proceedings of the WP8 Workshop “Emotion in
Communication”, ITC-Irst Povo, Trento, Italy, 2005.
[40] B. Morel. Embodied Conversational Agents for
Persuasion in Different Applications. In: HUMAINE.
Report on Basic Cues and Open Research Topics in
Communication and Emotions, 2004.
[41] T. Nabeth et alii. Using Artificial Agents to Stimulate
Participation in Virtual Communities, CELDA 2005,
Porto, Portugal, 2005.
[42] H. Nakanishi et alii. Can Software Agents Influence
Human Relations? Balance Theory in Agent-Mediated
Communities. In: 2th International Joint Conference on
Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Melbourne,
Austrália, 2003.
[43] P-Y. Oudeyer; F. Kaplan. Discovering Communication,
Connection Science, 18 (2), 2006.
[44] J. A. Pereira Brito. O Contexto das Tecnologias
Emergentes nos Processos Político-Eleitorais. A
Democracia Virtual é Possível?, Tese de Doutorado,
Ciências da Comunicação, Universidade de São Paulo,
2005.
[45] I. Poggi; E. Magno Caldognetto. The Score of
Multimodal Communication and the Goals of Political
Discourse. In: Quaderni dell'Istituto di Fonetica e
Dialettologia, Vol.1, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche,
Padova, 1999.
[46] C. J. Reynolds. Image Act Theory. Seventh International
Conference of Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry,
San Diego, California, USA, 2007.
[47] S. C. Shapiro. Natural-Language-Competent Robots,
IEEE Intelligent Systems 21(4), 2006.
[48] R. Sorbello et alii. Metaphor of Politics: A Mechanism of
Coalition Formation, Technical Report, AAAI
Workshop: Forming and Maintaining Coalitions and
Teams, Adaptive Multiagent Systems, San Jose, California,
2004.
[49] A. Sternberg. Using ‘Serious Games’ to Engage Users.
In: Knight Digital Media Center, 04/19/07.
[50] O. Stock et alii. Computational Humour. In: HUMAINE.
Report on Basic Cues and Open Research Topics in
Communication and Emotions, 2004.
[51] K. Stuart. The 10 Political Games Everyone Should Play.
In: Guardian Unlimited, October 26, 2006.
[52] K. Sycara. Arguments of Persuasion in Labour
Mediation. In: Proceedings of the Ninth International Joint
Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Los Angeles (USA),
1985.
[53] T. Tenbrink. Communicative Aspects of Human-Robot
Interaction. In: H. M. M. Rannut (Hrsg.) Languages in
Development, Lincom Europa, 2003.
[54] M. C. Torrance. Natural Communication with Mobile
Robots, AP Group, MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,
1995.
[55] I. Wachsmuth ; G. Knoblich. Embodied Communication
in Humans and Machines - A Research Agenda,
Artificial Intelligence Review, Springer, Vol. 24, No 3-4,
2005.
[56] L. Winner. Do Artifacts Have Politics?, In: The Whale
and the Reactor: a search for limits in an age of high
technology, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1986.
[57] L. Winner. Political Artifacts in Scandinavia: An
American Perspective, Scandinavian Journal of
Information Systems, 6 (2), 1994.
[58] M. Zanker et alii. Persuasive Online-Selling in Quality
and Taste Domains, International Conference on
Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies, Krakow,
2006.
[59] S. Zhao. Humanoid Social Robots as a Medium of
Communication, In: New Media & Society, Vol. 8, No. 3,
SAGE, 2006.
[60] S. Fuhrman et alii. The Application of Shannon Entropy
in the Identification of Putative Drug Targets,
Biosystems, V. 55, N. 1, 2000.
[61] M. Kohler et alii. Combining the Sociological Theory of
Bourdieu with Multi Agent Systems. In: C. Jonker et alii.
In: MASHO'00/ECAI, 2000.
[62] C. Lemaître; A. El Fallah-Seghrouchni. A Multiagent
Systems Theory of Meaning Based on the
Habermas/Bühler Communicative Action Theory. In:
7th Ibero-American Conference on AI, Atibaia, Brazil,
2000.
[63] M. Oliphant. The Dilemma of Saussurean
Communication. Biosystems, V. 37, N. 1-2, 1996.
[64] A. Pietarinen. Peirce's Theory of Communication and
It’s Contemporary Relevance. In: K. Nyíri. Mobile
Learning, Passagen Verlag, Vienna, 2003.
[65] M. Schillo et alii. Socially Competent Business Agents
with Attitude: Using Habitus Field theory to Design
Agents with Social Competence, AISB'00, Birmingham,
UK, 2000.
[66] M. Schoop. A Language-Action Perspective on
Cooperative Documentation Systems - Habermas and
Searle in Hospital. In: Proceedings of LAP’98,
Stockholm, 1998.
[67] E. E. Vallejo; C. E. Taylor. The Effects of Learning on
the Evolution of Saussurean Communication. In: IX
International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis
of Living Systems, The MIT Press, 2004.