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Rebuilding Public Reason in the Age of AI : Rhetorical Citizenship and Critical Doxic Literacy for Higher Education

Hietanen, Mika LU orcid (2026) In FUTUREd 1(1). p.31-42
Abstract
Democracies face a crisis of public reason grounded in a disintegration of shared epistemic ground and amplified by digital polarisation and AI-mediated disinformation. Current pedagogy, focused on deconstructive critique or fact-checking skills, fails to address how algorithmic systems engineer plausibility at scale. Higher education must cultivate discerning judgement alongside critique. Drawing on rhetorical studies, this essay proposes a dual-axis framework for civic pedagogy: Rhetorical Citizenship (ethical communicative agency, coalition-building, and accountable ethos) and Critical Doxic Literacy (mapping tacit belief systems and analysing engineered plausibility). This approach retools classical concepts – eikos (plausibility) and... (More)
Democracies face a crisis of public reason grounded in a disintegration of shared epistemic ground and amplified by digital polarisation and AI-mediated disinformation. Current pedagogy, focused on deconstructive critique or fact-checking skills, fails to address how algorithmic systems engineer plausibility at scale. Higher education must cultivate discerning judgement alongside critique. Drawing on rhetorical studies, this essay proposes a dual-axis framework for civic pedagogy: Rhetorical Citizenship (ethical communicative agency, coalition-building, and accountable ethos) and Critical Doxic Literacy (mapping tacit belief systems and analysing engineered plausibility). This approach retools classical concepts – eikos (plausibility) and doxa (shared premises) – to navigate hyper-eikotic digital environments where humans and algorithms co-produce a psychological feeling of truth decoupled from empirical reality. Using comparative case studies – Japan’s techno-animism, India’s digital sovereignty, and Brazil’s tiered liability – the essay demonstrates how these competencies operate across distinct governance and cultural contexts. It addresses cognitive, ethical, and social dimensions of learning in an AI-mediated public sphere, preparing graduates to map competing architectures of belief and exercise provisional judgement in conditions of manufactured uncertainty. (Less)
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author
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
argument literacy, rhetorical citizenship, epistemic crisis, algorithmic persuasion, public judgement
in
FUTUREd
volume
1
issue
1
pages
12 pages
ISSN
2760-8271
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
9e04d4ec-0d11-4cb0-bffe-b62c1f375dd5
alternative location
https://futured-j.org/articles/public-reason-and-ai-in-higher-education/
date added to LUP
2026-04-29 16:44:50
date last changed
2026-05-07 17:38:23
@article{9e04d4ec-0d11-4cb0-bffe-b62c1f375dd5,
  abstract     = {{Democracies face a crisis of public reason grounded in a disintegration of shared epistemic ground and amplified by digital polarisation and AI-mediated disinformation. Current pedagogy, focused on deconstructive critique or fact-checking skills, fails to address how algorithmic systems engineer plausibility at scale. Higher education must cultivate discerning judgement alongside critique. Drawing on rhetorical studies, this essay proposes a dual-axis framework for civic pedagogy: Rhetorical Citizenship (ethical communicative agency, coalition-building, and accountable ethos) and Critical Doxic Literacy (mapping tacit belief systems and analysing engineered plausibility). This approach retools classical concepts – eikos (plausibility) and doxa (shared premises) – to navigate hyper-eikotic digital environments where humans and algorithms co-produce a psychological feeling of truth decoupled from empirical reality. Using comparative case studies – Japan’s techno-animism, India’s digital sovereignty, and Brazil’s tiered liability – the essay demonstrates how these competencies operate across distinct governance and cultural contexts. It addresses cognitive, ethical, and social dimensions of learning in an AI-mediated public sphere, preparing graduates to map competing architectures of belief and exercise provisional judgement in conditions of manufactured uncertainty.}},
  author       = {{Hietanen, Mika}},
  issn         = {{2760-8271}},
  keywords     = {{argument literacy; rhetorical citizenship; epistemic crisis; algorithmic persuasion; public judgement}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{03}},
  number       = {{1}},
  pages        = {{31--42}},
  series       = {{FUTUREd}},
  title        = {{Rebuilding Public Reason in the Age of AI : Rhetorical Citizenship and Critical Doxic Literacy for Higher Education}},
  url          = {{https://futured-j.org/articles/public-reason-and-ai-in-higher-education/}},
  volume       = {{1}},
  year         = {{2026}},
}