This volume is the product of a unique collaborative endeavor undertaken by students enrolled in Media Criticism (COMM 4240) at Fitchburg State University during the Spring 2025 semester. Rather than writing papers that would be read only by an instructor and forgotten, students in this course were challenged to produce original media criticism worthy of public readership — and to experience firsthand the rigorous process by which academic knowledge is created, refined, and shared.

Each chapter in this collection applies one or more critical methods to a piece of media — whether film, television, or video games — through the lens of artificial intelligence. Authors developed their topics through a process that mirrors traditional academic publishing: a formal proposal, an annotated bibliography, a drafted manuscript, anonymous peer review, and a final revised submission incorporating feedback from both classmates and me, their professor.

The result is a collection of voices that are at once student and scholar: writers who have grappled seriously with difficult questions about how media reflects, reinforces, or resists the rise of artificial intelligence and its cultural implications. The chapters that follow represent not just the conclusions students reached, but the intellectual labor it took to get there. This book is available digitally at no cost and in print at cost, in keeping with the course’s commitment to open, accessible scholarship. We hope it serves as a resource for students, educators, and anyone interested in the critical study of media and political culture.