A dancing bear, a colleague, or a sharpened toolbox? The cautious adoption of generative artificial intelligence technologies in digital humanities research.

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is reshaping the research landscape and carries significant implications for Digital Humanities (DH), a field long intertwined with computational methods and technologies. This study examines how DH scholars are adopting and critically eval...

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Publicado en:Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology Vol. 77; no. 6; pp. 812 - 831
Autores principales: Ma, Rongqian, Dedema, Meredith, Cox, Andrew
Formato: research tables/charts Journal Article
Publicado: Wiley-Blackwell Jun2026
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Jun2026
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      pub: Wiley-Blackwell
      place: Malden, Massachusetts
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        10.1002/asi.70066
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        atl: A dancing bear, a colleague, or a sharpened toolbox? The cautious adoption of generative artificial intelligence technologies in digital humanities research.
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        au:
          Ma, Rongqian
          Dedema, Meredith
          Cox, Andrew
        affil: Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington Indiana,, USA
      sug:
        subj:
          Artificial Intelligence, Generative Utilization
          Digital Technology
          Liberal Arts
          Research
          Research Personnel
          Artificial Intelligence, Generative Evaluation
          Motivation Evaluation
          Task Performance and Analysis
          Human
          Interviews
          Attitude Evaluation
          Productivity
          Skill Acquisition
          Multimethod Studies
          Prospective Studies
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          Computer Literacy
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          Publishing
          Grounded Theory
      ab: The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is reshaping the research landscape and carries significant implications for Digital Humanities (DH), a field long intertwined with computational methods and technologies. This study examines how DH scholars are adopting and critically evaluating GenAI in their research. Drawing on an international survey of 76 respondents and 15 in‐depth interviews, we investigate scholars' motivations for using GenAI tools, the specific practices through which they integrate these tools into their research, and their perceptions of the benefits, risks, and challenges associated with GenAI. Our findings reveal divergent opinions and imaginaries within the DH community: while many scholars view GenAI as a means to enhance efficiency and support reskilling, others express concern about its impact on scholarly identity, intellectual labor, and disciplinary values. Situated within the history of DH and analyzed through the lens of actor‐network theory, the results suggest that GenAI is being incrementally enrolled into DH research networks, reshaping relationships among human and nonhuman actors in ways that remain contested and actively negotiated. As one of the first empirical studies on this topic, this work provides an initial foundation for understanding GenAI's evolving role in DH scholarship and points toward avenues for future research.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
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        tables/charts
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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