PROJECT TYPE:

• Institutional Research Project

PROJECT DURATION:

• October 1, 2025 – September 30, 2029

PROJECT LEADER AND TEAM MEMBERS:

• Asst. Prof. Dr. Matija Jelača – Project Leader
• Asst. Prof. Dr. Boris Koroman – Team Member
• Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dubravka Dulibić Paljar - Team Member
• Edgar Buršić, PhD, Senior lecturer – Team Member
• Assoc. Prof. Dr. Luka Bekavac (FFZG) – Team Member
• Asst. Prof. Dr. Brigita Miloš (FFRI) - Team Member
• Ante Jerić, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow (FFRI) – Team Member
• Marijeta Bradić, PhD student (FFZG) - Team Member 

SHORT PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

The contemporary digital or information age is fundamentally defined by the accelerated development of digital information and communication technologies. The past few decades have been particularly marked, first by the emergence of the Internet and social networks, and later by the unprecedented rise of artificial intelligence—especially large language models. The economic, political, social, and cultural consequences of such rapid technological progress are truly tectonic in scale and, to a great extent, still beyond full comprehension.

The goal of this project is to investigate the significant challenges that such technological, economic, political, and social developments pose to the contemporary literary and cultural field. The research will focus on two key aspects of the modern digital age.

The first is the attention economy as the dominant economic model of the digital world: in an era of information abundance, the scarcest and most valuable resource becomes what information consumes—attention. How to attract attention as efficiently as possible and retain it for as long as possible becomes the economic imperative to which everything is subordinated and from which everything follows. The consequences of this attention economy are comprehensive and visible on all levels, and their common denominator is fragmentation—firstly, the fragmentation of attention as a fundamental cognitive process on the individual psychological level; then, the fragmentation of the public and social sphere; and finally, the fragmentation and increasing polarization of political life. Since literary production and reception, in all their aspects, demand a particularly large investment of time and attention, it is clear that the attention economy and the resulting general fragmentation must have had a transformative effect on the literary field as a whole.

The second key aspect of the contemporary era that the project will address is the recent development of AI systems, particularly large language models. The emergence of computational systems capable of simulating linguistic communication and generating vast quantities of text of all kinds inevitably raises a series of questions concerning essential aspects of literature as the art of language, as well as philology as a scientific discipline.

The complexity and multidimensionality of these two problem areas require an interdisciplinary approach. Accordingly, the project team consists of researchers approaching these topics from a wide range of disciplines: the humanities (literary theory and history, philosophy, ethnography, cultural and gender studies) and social sciences (sociology, cognitive psychology, behavioral economics) but also technical fields (computer science and artificial intelligence) and natural sciences (mathematics, physics, biology), as well as interdisciplinary domains such as cognitive science.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

The general goal of the project is to strengthen the capacities of scientific research in the field of the humanities through an interdisciplinary approach to the study of literature and culture in the digital age, as well as to promote the application of digital tools—especially large language models—in scientific and educational practice.

From this general goal, the following specific objectives arise:

1. To produce relevant scientific knowledge about the transformations of the literary and cultural field in the digital age.
2. To enhance scientific collaboration and dialogue at the international level.
3. To ensure public visibility and effective dissemination of results.
4. To develop digital research tools and competencies in the field of the humanities.

PROJECT HOLDER: Juraj Dobrila University of Pula