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LIT-1331: Epistemic welfare and algorithmic recommender systems: overcoming the epistemic crisis in the digitalized public sphere

1 min read

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StatusActive — skimmed 2026-10-21 (NOTE-1035): every section was covered, but through a fetch tool that returned section-by-section accounts with short quotes, not a verbatim copy, so the quotes are unchecked; the article is open access (CC BY) and the publisher refused direct fetches. Worth reading for its definition of epistemic welfare as the conditions and capabilities for epistemic agency in the public sphere, for its staging of capabilities (literacy turning availability into access, critical skills turning access into knowledge), and for Goldman's five standards applied to news recommenders. Read it knowing that it is a theory paper with no data, that it treats legacy media rather than platforms, and that a first-hand reading has not been made.
Version2
Tagsepistemology, society-and-governance
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1035 — Hyzen, Van den Bulck, Puppis, Kulig and Paulussen — Epistemic welfare and algorithmic recommender systems

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Hyzen, A., Van den Bulck, H., Puppis, M., Kulig, M. & Paulussen, S. (2026). Epistemic welfare and algorithmic recommender systems: overcoming the epistemic crisis in the digitalized public sphere. Communication Theory 36(1): 46–57. doi:10.1093/ct/qtaf018.

Skimmed 2026-10-21 (NOTE-1035), through a fetch tool; quotes unchecked.

Key takeaways

  • Epistemic welfare: “creating and maintaining the conditions and capabilities for individuals’ epistemic agency in the public sphere”.
  • Stages of capability. Literacies “turn availability into access”, and critical skills “turn access into knowledge acquisition”.
  • Transparency is not enough. Transparency duties, which are all the EU AI Act asks of media recommenders, are judged insufficient.

Why this is here

A25: it “comes particularly close to our conjunction of legibility and operational availability”; a person may be able to evaluate information yet lack access to it. Bears on CLAIM-403 and TERM-064.

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