Call for papers: Special Section on Distributed Citizenship

Distributed Citizenship: Sharing, Shifting, and Appropriating the Chores of Democracy Across Platforms, Networks, and Infrastructures 

• Submission deadline: 31 May 2026
• Expected date of publication: Summer 2027
• Guest Editors: Emilija Gagrčin, Hallvard Moe, Özlem Demirkol-Tønnesen, Mehri Agai 

Algorithmic curation and generative AI expose not only the deep entanglements between media, platforms, institutions, and citizens, but also how democracy depends on ordinary people’s ability to critically manage the shifting burdens of political information. The abundance of competing information sources offers benefits such as convenience, but also challenges like distraction and credibility concerns, which requires citizens to be more selective and cautious about their attention, trust and action. This is not an easy task. 

For almost a century, debates about citizens’ roles in democracy have centered on the “informed citizen” ideal (Schudson, 2000). While some scholars uphold it as the normative yardstick of a healthy public sphere and electoral participation; others contend that it is both unrealistic and too narrow, arguing that knowledge stockpiles alone do not necessarily trigger democratic action. In its place, research instead portrays people as bystanders to public life and as mostly “monitorial citizens” (Amnå & Ekman, 2014; Schudson, 2000; Ytre-Arne & Moe, 2018). These citizens prefer the convenience of a few trusted sources of information when engaging in public matters. Yet in our contemporary media ecology, this delegation of resposibility has grown even further; chatbots, influencers and algorithms now mediate what we see, know and act upon. This raises the all-too-important question: when does distribution or delegation go too far? At the same time, how can ordinary citizens exercise their democratic role when the information treadmill keeps accelerating? 

Recent work proposes a shift from assuming citizens have full control over what they know to acknowledging that citizens more likely distribute specific democratic tasks across social and information networks to lighten the load (Moe, 2020, 2023; Ytre-Arne & Moe, 2018). Accordingly, citizens may have timely, actionable information on certain topics, channeled through their networks, media habits, or AI intermediaries, that lets them anticipate decisions affecting their lives and act when needed. On other topics they are blindsided, learning too late (or through distorted cues) about policy changes, collective problems, or openings to claim their voice. Even though some citizens may avoid issues of public concern altogether (e.g. news avoiders), most citizens can be said to fall somewhere on this spectrum. Distribution of tasks, in this view, is relational (Gagrčin, 2024; Gagrčin & Porten-Cheé, 2023): one household member may track upcoming healthcare reforms, another keeps an eye on school-board debates, while WhatsApp parenting groups or neighbourhood Telegram channels relay the “burglar-alarm” when collective attention and action are required. 

Reframing citizenship as distributed across networks and media infrastructures draws attention not only to what citizens do but also to how their strategies are shaped by media systems and political communication processes. Legacy news media, social platforms, partisan outlets, and AI-driven intermediaries all participate—more or less explicitly—in structuring these patterns of attention, delegation, and vulnerability. 

This special issue aims to examine when and how this distribution empowers citizens and when it entrenches inequality. We welcome work that tests, critiques, or reimagines distributed citizenship. Our aim is not to canonize a single framework but to advance a richer, more realistic account of democratic engagement in platform-driven democracies. 

We are looking for studies that foreground the strategies, capacities, and constraints of ordinary people rather than political elites or platforms. Method-wise, we welcome surveys, digital methods, qualitative, experimental, or ethnographic work, as well as mixed-methods designs. Contributions from outside Western democracies and from marginalized and/or underresearched communities and contexts are strongly encouraged, as well as comparative cross-national research. Theoretical contributions that are relevant to the topics and questions explored in the call will also be considered. 

Authors are encouraged (but not required) to engage with one or more of the following themes and questions: 

Everyday distribution of attention and knowledge 

• How is attention to different policy domains (such as climate, housing, or migration) distributed within households, peer groups, or online communities? How does this distribution emerge, and how is it sustained? 
• How do news-avoidant or otherwise disconnected publics assemble alternative information repertoires through distribution, and where is the tipping point at which such distribution begins to undermine citizens’ awareness and willingness to engage? 

Space and practices of civic delegation 

• Which offline or online third spaces (e.g., gaming servers, influencer live-streams, neighborhood chats) facilitate civic engagement? What role do they play in the delegation of democratic tasks, and how does their efficacy vary across social groups or localities? 
• How do different communicative modes and AI-driven intermediaries shape citizens’ rhythms of attention and exposure, moving them from peripheral awareness to active engagement, and to what extent do they equalise or exacerbate exposure to policy shocks, misinformation, and the omission or selective visibility of certain publics?  

Infrastructures, methods and media systems  

• How can mixed method or experimental research designs that combine digital traces with diaries, interviews, or ethnography best reveal who sounds and who hears the alarm across diverse media environments? 
• How do different media systems and political communication actors shape, or adapt to, the fragmented and distributed patterns of attention and civic activation in contemporary democracies? 

Full paper submissions 

Full papers should be submitted by 31 May 2026 23:59 CET via this online form (external link).

The submitted file should be in Microsoft Word and should not exceed 8,900 words (all-inclusive). Do not include the title page in this document. For formatting and referencing instructions, please refer to the IJoC’s guidelines for authors (external link). 

Workshop In Bergen (Norway) 

In addition to the open Call for Papers, we will host a workshop in Bergen in early March 2026. The workshop will provide an opportunity for interested scholars to present and further develop their ideas prior to submission. It is designed to foster dialogue, provide constructive feedback, and strengthen contributions in line with the overall theme of distributed citizenship. Funding for accommodation and, where needed, travel may be available for participants. Please indicate if this is the case when you submit your abstract. 

Interested authors are invited to submit a 500-word abstract outlining their approach, data, and how their work relates to this call. Abstracts were submitted by 15 December 2025 23:59 CET. Abstract decisions and workshop invitations will be announced by 15 January 2026. 

Participation is encouraged but not required: all papers for the Special Section will ultimately be submitted and reviewed through the general double-blind peer review process. In short: you can submit a full paper without having submitted an abstract at any point. 

For content-related questions contact Emilija.Gagrcin@uib.no or Hallvard.Moe@uib.no; for organizational and logistic questions, contact Lene.Angelskar@uib.no 

The Special Section is edited by members of the research project Distributed and Prepared. A new theory of citizens` public connection networks in the age of datafication (PREPARE), at the University of Bergen, Norway. The project is funded by the European Union (ERC, PREPARE, 101044464). 

Amnå, E., & Ekman, J. (2014). Standby citizens: Diverse faces of political passivity. European Political Science Review, European Consortium for Political Research, 6(2), 261–281. https://doi.org/10.1017/S175577391300009X (external link) 

Gagrčin, E., & Porten-Cheé, P. (2023). Between individual and collective social effort: Vocabularies of informed citizenship in different information environments. International Journal of Communication, 17, 1510–1529. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/17240/4065 (external link) 

Gagrčin, E. (2024). ‘Who, if not me?’ How political self-categorizations shape the meaning of political self-expression on social media as a citizenship norm. Information, Communication & Society, 27(1), 109–125. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2023.2174792 (external link) 

Moe, H. (2020). Distributed Readiness Citizenship: A Realistic, Normative Concept for Citizens’ Public Connection. Communication Theory, 30(2), 205–225. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtz016 (external link) 

Moe, H. (2023). Operationalizing distribution as a key concept for public sphere theory. A call for ethnographic sensibility of different social worlds. Communication Theory, 33(2–3), 112–121. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtad008 (external link)  

Schudson, M. (2000). Good Citizens and Bad History: Today’s Political Ideals in Historical Perspective. The Communication Review, 4(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714420009359458 (external link)  

Ytre-Arne, B., & Moe, H. (2018). Approximately Informed, Occasionally Monitorial? Reconsidering Normative Citizen Ideals. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 23(2), 227–246. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161218771903 (external link)