Mapping technological futures: anticipatory discourse through text mining
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The volatility and unpredictability of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), generate significant uncertainty, which is widely discussed on social media. This study examines anticipatory discourse surrounding technological futures by analysing 1.5 million posts from 400 key opinion leaders (KOLs) published on the X platform (2021–2023). Using advanced text mining techniques, including BERTopic modelling, sentiment, emotion, and attitude analyses, the research identifies 100 distinct topics reflecting anticipated tech-driven futures. Our findings emphasise the dual role of KOLs in framing present futures -optimistic visions of transformative technologies like AI and IoT-and influencing future presents , where these projections shape contemporary societal and geopolitical debates. Positive emotions such as Hope dominate, outweighing Anxiety, particularly in topics like “Machine Learning, Data Science, and Deep Learning,” while discussions around “Climate Change” and “War, Ukraine, and Trump People” elicit Anxiety . By framing technologies as solutions to societal challenges, KOLs act as mediators of societal narratives, bridging imagined futures and current realities. These insights underscore their pivotal role in directing public attention with emerging technologies during periods of heightened uncertainty, advancing our understanding of anticipatory discourse in technology-mediated contexts.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.017 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".