Conference Program

Democratic debate is becoming more polarized and fragmented, with the spread of hate speech and forms of incivility (Engesser et al., 2017). These dynamics can be understood as strategies that increase engagement and exploit the attention economy of digital platforms (Shugars and Ha, 2025). This situation raises concerns for democracy, especially because of emotional proximity and informational distortion. Emotional proximity is becoming more important in shaping how people perceive epistemic authority in social networks (Boccia Artieri, 2025), meaning that users often trust information because they feel emotionally connected to it rather than because it is accurate. Informational distortion, in a context often described as post-truth (McIntyre, 2018), becomes a strategic tool used to influence public opinion (Vasist et al., 2024).

In such a current global infosphere (Floridi, 2014), Artificial Intelligence plays an increasingly important role in the algorithmic mediation between citizens and democratic participation. Through Machine Learning, an advanced statistical modelling technique, AI can automatically learn from data, make predictions, “create new things” (Tlili et al., 2023), and influence how knowledge is produced and shared in today’s post-public sphere (Schlesinger, 2020). As a result, education systems face a structural challenge: they must prepare students for a world where AI is integrated into the ways people learn, access information, and think.

In response, this contribution explores how Media Literacy should update to prepare learners to participate in a democratic discourse in which AI plays a central role. The author argues that to respond to this epistemic shift (Bartsch et al., 2025), it’s crucial to integrate two main areas in education: AI literacy and human abilities that AI cannot replicate (Quattrociocchi et al., 2025).

The first area concerns a technical understanding of how AI systems and algorithms work. Learners should be aware of limitations such as bias (Tao et al., 2024) and hallucinations (Loru et al., 2025). At the same time, students should understand the ethical and social implications of AI (Ricaurte, 2022), including inclusivity, transparency in algorithmic functioning, clarity about how data are used, and the reliability of information generated by AI systems (Holmes et al., 2022; Khosravi et al., 2022). These aspects should also be contextualized to the impact of AI in media environments, especially in relation to multimedia content that may be partly or completely false.

The second area includes abilities that remain key characteristics of human intelligence and allow people to interact critically with AI systems, and media. Critical thinking (CT) helps learners navigate, search for, and filter data, information, and multimedia content available on digital platforms (European Commission, 2022). Creativity is essential for active use. Together with CT, Creativity fosters the ability to deal with uncertainty (Baumann, 2000) and strongly influences the digital environments through which we inform ourselves. Emotional intelligence is another key competence. It includes the ability to recognize, understand, regulate, communicate, and use emotions effectively in social interactions (Mollik and Mollik, 2023) so to develop respectful forms of interaction that consider the perspective of others.