Reflections on Algorithmic Governance Responding to AI-Mediated Mobilization and Computational Propaganda Within the Framework of Digital Sovereignty

Abstract

In this article, we contextualise the response of algorithmic governance to AI-mediated mobilisation and computational propaganda within the broader frame of digital sovereignty. The study does not focus on technicalities of single systems, but contextualises algorithmic governance in relation to central arguments on code as regulation, surveillance capitalism, digital sovereignty and risk-based AI regulation. It argues that AI-mediated mobilisation and computational propaganda reveal systemic tensions between claims of sovereignty, transnational infrastructures and design-based modes of control, such as hypernudging and lex algorithmica. This essay explores how discourses of digital sovereignty, algorithmic risk governance and binding frameworks like the EU AI Act can be read as attempts to regain meaningful control over the algorithmic infrastructures that govern public communication by drawing on conceptual and regulatory literature. The essay argues that good solutions to AI-mediated mobilisation and computational propaganda require multi-layered governance designs that take digital sovereignty as a substantive goal, without resorting to purely defensive or isolationist approaches.