ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Media Governance and the Public Sphere
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1562368
This article is part of the Research TopicUnderstanding Media Policy in the 21st Century: Affirmation, Challenge, Re-ConstitutionView all 7 articles
Untouched Minds in a Tangled Web: Navigating mental autonomy and epistemic welfare amidst digital propaganda
Provisionally accepted
- 1Centre for IT & IP law, Faculty of Law, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
- 2Center for Media, Inequality and Change, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
In this article, we propose a new theoretical account of mental autonomy through which policymakers can develop new legal instruments to mitigate the harms caused by propaganda.We argue for a renewed understanding of mental autonomy, informed by relational autonomy, highlighting its interdependent nature, shaped by technological mediation and social structures in the digital public sphere. We begin by defining propaganda and discussing its potential to inflict harm (Seeliger & Sevignani, 2022;Staab & Thiel, 2022) through the transformational forces of datafication, algorithmization, and plaformization (Latzer, 2022;Splichal, 2022). A historical review of legal approaches to propaganda reveals critical gaps in existing frameworks, which continue to rely on outdated perceptions of autonomy that assume the mind is largely immune to external influences. To address these inadequacies, we build upon the novel concept of epistemic welfare-societal structures and conditions to ensure epistemic agency-and extend it to mental autonomy, which we argue is a necessary precursor to such welfare. Finally, while recognizing the challenges of implementing legal protections against propaganda, we advocate for a governance approach that balances protection and freedom within the broader notions of free thought and expression.
Keywords: Law, propaganda, mental autonomy, Computational propaganda, epistemic welfare, Public sphere, Freedom of thought, Mental harm
Received: 17 Jan 2025; Accepted: 16 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yildirim Vranckaert and Hyzen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Emine Ozge Yildirim Vranckaert, Centre for IT & IP law, Faculty of Law, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Aaron Hyzen, Center for Media, Inequality and Change, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 19104, Pennsylvania, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.