THE FUTURE IS IN THE SKY: PROMISES AND CONCERNS IN THE PUBLIC COMMUNICATION ON DIGITAL TOWERS AND REFORM OF EUROPEAN AIR TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT

STS has increasingly drawn attention to technoscientific expectations as sociological phenomena rather than linguistic abstractions, focusing on the discursive practices employed by specific stakeholders to shape a certain future of technology. This study built on this line of research by investigating and “unpacking” promises and concerns incorporated in official communication on Remote Digital Towers (RDT) ‒ a technology currently being tested in Europe and part of legislative and regulatory measures for reforming European Air Traffic Management (ATM). By applying discourse analysis on a corpus of official documents and interviews, we identify four discursive strategies shaping digitalization promises and through which stakeholders ‒ institutions, regulators, organizations, and companies ‒ seek to obtain reform implementation ‒ the biological metaphor of the system evolving naturally; the “magical” representation of technology; the dream of a unified digital society; and the expectation of air traffic growth. Furthermore, we identify and unpack a counter-narrative mainly promoted by Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) unions and opposing promises with concerns. In the conclusion, we discuss the sociotechnical imaginary on which digitalization promises converge and its potential implications.