Prospective Citizen Responsibility in Algorithmically Mediated Societies: Civic Ethics, Epistemic Justice, and Democratic Innovation

Durango R.A.B.; Correa D.A.C.; Zuluaga C.G.; Flores E.A.R. · Nuevo Derecho (2026) · DOI: 10.25057/2500672x.2038

Resumen

Contemporary democracies confront a philosophical challenge of first magnitude: the algorithmically mediated colonization of public deliberation, epistemic formation, and civic identity by systems whose logic operates opaquely, asymmetrically, and oriented toward behavioral optimization rather than democratic strengthening. This article proposes Prospective Civic Responsibility (PCR) as an original philosophical category for conceptualizing active ethical citizenship in algorithmically mediated societies. Drawing on a systematic review of 127 peer-reviewed articles identified across two complementary databases — Web of Science (A&HCI + SSCI, n = 77) and Scopus (ARTS/SOCI/COMP, n = 50) — through 12 search equations covering the period 2015–2026, and integrating six philosophical traditions (Jonas, Habermas, Rawls, Mouffe, Fricker, and Floridi) with the contestatory democracy and constituent power frameworks of Mejia Quintana, Lefort, Rosanvallon, and Abensour, the article demonstrates that existing literature has produced an extraordinarily sophisticated diagnosis of algorithmic transformations (63% of corpus, Axes 1-4) while leaving dramatically underdeveloped the normative philosophical response from the standpoint of ordinary citizenship (37%, Axes 5-8). A systematic deduplication process eliminated 126 duplicate records (96 cross-source WoS-Scopus, 29 Scopus-internal, 1 WoS-internal) from 2,483 identified records, yielding 2,357 unique records for screening. Six normative principles are derived from the integrated philosophical analysis: algorithmic transparency (P1), explainability and right of contestation (P2), epistemic equity (P3), participatory governance (P4), informational solidarity (P5), and informed resistance (P6). These principles carry direct implications for the design of democratic innovations in polarized digital contexts, including the European AI Act, UNESCO AI ethics recommendations, and next-generation participatory democratic processes. © (2026), (University Institution of Envigado). All rights reserved.

Instituciones: Universidad Autónoma del Perú