Achim Rettinger, Full Professor and leader of the department Computational Linguistics and Digital Humanities, Trier University, Germany

Tanja Zdolšek Draksler, Research Associate at Faculty of Electrical Engineering and on AI under the auspices of UNESCO, Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

George Manias, Assistant Professor at Tilburg University, The Netherlands; Research Associate at University of Piraeus, Greece

As artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) systems become increasingly embedded in public governance, media ecosystems, and civic infrastructures, the imperative to ensure their ethical and democratic alignment grows ever more urgent. This special issue brings together interdisciplinary perspectives and research initiatives that explore how AI can be designed, governed, and deployed in ways that reinforce—not undermine—democractic values, institutional trust, and civic agency.

The integration of AI into public services and digital platforms raises complex questions: How can we ensure that algorithmic decisions are transparent and accountable? What mechanisms can safeguard against bias, manipulation, and exclusion? And how can citizens meaningfully participate in shaping the AI systems that affect their lives? Ethical and democratic AI is not just about avoiding harm, it’s about actively designing systems that support human dignity, civic participation, and institutional trust. The future of democracy depends not just on how we govern AI, but on how we use AI to strengthen governance itself.

This special collection assembles interdisciplinary research on how to design, govern, and evaluate AI to serve the public interest and safeguard fundamental human values and rights. We ask: How can algorithmic decisions be made transparent and contestable? Which mechanisms curtail bias, manipulation, and exclusion—especially for marginalized communities? How should citizens, public servants, and civil society participate in the lifecycle of the AI systems that affect them? And how can we measure whether AI actually improves outcomes in health, education, welfare, justice, and media integrity?

Ethical and democratic AI is more than harm avoidance. It requires proactive design choices that uphold human dignity, ensure inclusiveness, enable civic participation, and build durable trust in institutions. Achieving this is a socio-technical task that seeks to:

* Invest in interdisciplinary research that joins AI/ML with human-computer interaction (HCI), ethics, law, political science and social science.

* Integrate Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) frameworks throughout the AI lifecycle to ensure transparency, accountability, inclusiveness, and compliance with fundamental rights.

* Empower meaningful participation so communities can shape problem definitions, data practices, and system governance.

* Build public-sector AI capacity—procuremen standards, evaluation, and accountability—aligned with democratic goals.

We invite contributions that bring rigorous evidence, methodological innovation, and practical pathways to resilient digital futures.

This special collection seeks cross-disciplinary, evidence-based research on how AI/ML systems can be designed, governed, and deployed to reinforce—rather than erode—democratic values, institutional trust, and civic agency. We welcome contributions from computer science, data science, law and public policy, philosophy/ethics, media and communication studies, HCI, STS, economics, and the social sciences.

More specifically, the special issue is looking for contributions on the following topics:

1. Fairness, Bias, and Non-Discrimination: metrics, audits, tradeoffs, fairness under distribution shift, impacts on protected groups, disability and accessibility.

2. Trustworthiness, Safety, and Accountability: evaluation frameworks, public-interest safety audits, alignment of AI for civic infrastructure; model/data provenance and post-deployment monitoring.

3. Democratic Governance & Regulation: procurement and standards, risk classification, public sector uses, administrative/constitutional law interfaces, rights impact assessments.

4. Participation & Co-Design: participatory and community-led methods, citizen assemblies for AI, contestability and recourse, public engagement and literacy.

5. Media Integrity, Literacy & Information Ecosystems: recommender systems, content moderation, generative AI and elections, disinformation/misinformation, platform governance and transparency.

6. Public Services & Social Outcomes: health, education, welfare, labor and hiring, housing, credit, policing and justice; measurement of benefit/harms and institutional trust.

7. Data Governance & Privacy: privacy preserving ML, differential privacy, secure data spaces for the public sector, data stewardship, indigenous and community data rights.

8. Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI): integrated frameworks for responsible AI design, societal impact assessments, anticipatory ethics, value-sensitive design, and cross-disciplinary governance of emerging technologies.

9. Evaluation, Benchmarks, and Methods: causal inference and audit methods, socio-technical evaluations, mixed methods designs, simulation and field experiments.

Keywords: Responsible AI, Fairness, Trustworthy AI, Democratic Governance, Regulation, Disinformation, Media Integrity, Public Interest Technology, Participation, Accountability, Transparency, Data Governance, Privacy, Evaluation, AI Literacy.

We welcome submissions across a variety of article types to showcase impactful research and advance knowledge. Please review the descriptions below to determine the best fit for your work.

1. Original Research Articles: These articles present novel findings from empirical studies. Manuscripts should include a clear structure typically consisting of Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion sections, or a similar logical organization appropriate for the field. Emphasis is placed on rigorous methodology, accurate data presentation, and a thorough interpretation of results.

2. Review Articles: We accept comprehensive reviews of existing literature on focused research topics. These articles synthesize current knowledge, identify key trends and gaps, and offer a critical perspective on the state of the field and potential future research directions. Reviews should be systematic and objective, and should not simply be a compilation of previously published work.

3. Case Studies: These articles detail unique and insightful instances of a phenomenon, intervention, or event. Case studies provide in-depth analysis of specific examples, contributing to understanding complex issues and generating hypotheses for further investigation.

4. Methodologies/Methods & Protocols: This category encompasses manuscripts that describe new or significantly improved procedures, experimental methods, tests, or analytical techniques. Submissions should provide sufficient detail to allow for replication by other researchers and demonstrate the validity and reliability of the described method.

5. Perspective Articles /Position Papers: We invite submissions of well-reasoned, forward-looking articles that present a clear viewpoint on a significant topic or emerging issue in the field of the present Journal’s issue. These articles do not necessarily report original research but offer critical analysis, propose new frameworks, or outline future research directions. A strong rationale and well-supported arguments are essential.

We invite researchers to submit their manuscripts (not abstracts) for this special collection. The call will be open from October 30 to December 31, 2025.

Manuscripts (4000-5000 words) should clearly outline the research focus and relevance to the journal’s scope, methodology, and interdisciplinary contribution, as well as your research findings and implications.

Papers’ review: A rolling review process will begin during the final weeks of the call. This will allow early submissions to receive feedback promptly. All reviews will be completed within two months of the call’s closing.

Once authors receive their peer reviews, they will have a maximum of two weeks to send their final version. The special issue will be published in April 2026.

Submit your paper to: info@ircai.org. Please address your submission to Mrs. Senja Požar and include the issue’s title.

Full manuscript deadline: December 31, 2025
Publication date: April 2026

For more information, contact the editorial team at info@ircai.org.