Democratic Capacity under Algorithmic Mediation: Citizen Agency, Institutional Responsibility and Resilient Public Communication

Digital communication and information environments increasingly shape how citizens encounter public issues, interact with political and public actors, participate in collective life, and form judgments. Research on algorithmic governance, platform power, misinformation, generative artificial intelligence, and democratic resilience has generated important insights, but these debates often remain analytically fragmented. A shared concern is how citizens, organisations, and democratic institutions can understand, navigate, and contest environments in which visibility, interaction, and access to information are increasingly mediated by algorithms. Recent studies highlight the importance of digital literacy, political agency, institutional trust, organisational accountability, platform governance, and resilient communication, while also demonstrating persistent inequalities in digital resources and participation. However, less is known about how capacities at the individual, organisational, and systemic levels interact, and about the conditions under which democratic agency and accountability can be sustained or restored. A more integrated investigation is therefore needed to clarify how democratic systems can adapt to technological change without treating technology as inherently either a democratic threat or a solution.This Research Topic aims to develop democratic capacity as an integrative framework for analysing how citizens, political and public organisations, and institutions can function effectively under pervasive algorithmic mediation. It seeks to examine the capacities required to understand digitally mediated environments, make informed judgments, participate meaningfully, communicate credibly, exercise agency, contest consequential decisions, and adapt while preserving democratic accountability. Contributions may address how these capacities are distributed across social groups and institutional contexts; how inequalities, opacity, and platform power constrain them; and how regulation, organisational practices, civic initiatives, and institutional design can strengthen them. The Research Topic also welcomes research examining relations between micro-, meso-, and systemic-level processes, including how citizen experiences influence organisations and how institutional arrangements shape opportunities for democratic participation.To gather further insights into democratic capacity across citizen, organisational, and systemic levels, this Research Topic welcomes theoretical, empirical, comparative, and interdisciplinary contributions addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:• Digital literacy, resilience, citizenship, and political agency• Digital inequalities, exclusion, and unequal access to democratic resources• Algorithmic visibility, opacity, bias, and public understanding• Political participation, civic contestation, and collective action• Political parties, civil-society organisations, and social movements• News media, public communication, and information intermediation• Institutional trust, legitimacy, responsiveness, and accountability• Explainability, transparency, and responsibility in AI-mediated environments• Platform governance, generative artificial intelligence, and recommender systems• Regulation, institutional design, and democratic oversight• Data infrastructures and the conditions of public decision-making• Democratic adaptation and resilient communication under technological change Topic editors: Marija Gombar, F. Ramón Villaplana, Domagoj Bebic Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/86978/democratic-capacity-under-algorithmic-mediation-citizen-agency-institutional-responsibility-and-resilient-public-communication