Media Sustainability in AI-Mediated Ecosystems: Platform Power, Governance, and the Future of Public Communication

The rapid expansion of generative artificial intelligence is profoundly reshaping the media ecosystem and the conditions under which journalism creates, distributes, and monetizes public-interest information. News organizations increasingly rely on AI to improve editorial workflows, content production, personalization, and audience engagement, while simultaneously facing growing dependencies on a small number of global platforms and AI providers. The emerging AI-mediated information environment is no longer defined solely by search engines and social media, but also by conversational agents, generative search, automated summaries, and synthetic content that increasingly mediate public access to news and knowledge. These structural transformations raise urgent questions about the sustainability of journalism, the visibility and value of original reporting, the governance of AI-mediated information flows, and the capacity of media to continue fulfilling their democratic role in increasingly automated communication environments.This Research Topic explores media sustainability as one of the defining challenges of the AI era. It adopts a multidimensional perspective that goes beyond economic viability to examine governance, legal frameworks, editorial independence, business models, audience relationships, and democratic resilience. The collection examines how generative AI, platform power, and algorithmic mediation are reshaping the conditions under which journalism creates value, reaches audiences, and fulfills its public service role. Particular attention is given to platform dependency, the ownership and commercialization of journalistic content, copyright and licensing, audience disintermediation, and the growing influence of AI-driven intermediaries. By bringing together conceptual, empirical, and comparative research, this Research Topic aims to advance understanding of the structural transformations affecting media ecosystems and to identify governance models and strategies that can support more sustainable, independent, and democratically relevant journalism and public communication in AI-mediated societies.We welcome theoretical, empirical, comparative, and methodological contributions addressing the sustainability of journalism and public communication in AI-mediated media ecosystems. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:• media sustainability and the political economy of AI-driven platform ecosystems• platform power, algorithmic mediation, and the future of journalism• ownership, copyright, licensing, and value distribution of journalistic content in AI ecosystems• governance, regulation, and platform accountability in AI-mediated public communication• platform dependency, audience disintermediation, and new media business models• AI assistants, generative search, and their impact on news visibility, traffic, and public knowledge• transparency, trust, and responsible AI adoption in journalism and news organizations• media pluralism, democratic resilience, and concentration of power in AI-mediated communication• sustainability challenges facing local, regional, and minority-language media• comparative perspectives on AI governance across media systems.Information and Instructions for AuthorsManuscript summaries (Frontiers' name for abstracts) of up to 500 words will be considered until 15 October, 2026. Authors are encouraged to submit a manuscript summary before submitting a full manuscript. Topic editors: Magdalena Trillo-Domínguez, Simón Peña-Fernández Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83276/media-sustainability-in-ai-mediated-ecosystems-platform-power-governance-and-the-future-of-public-communication