Public Knowledge in Transformation: Education, Technology and Human Interaction across Organizations and Working Life

About the Journal

Established in 1994, Javnost—The Public is the journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture (EURICOM). It provides an international and interdisciplinary forum for theoretically grounded research on publicness, media and communication, and their relationships with social and cultural change. Its remit encompasses the formation of publics, public knowledge, representation, communicative inequalities and the institutional conditions of public life. The journal welcomes empirical and theoretical contributions that advance understanding beyond their immediate case or setting. Journal aims and scope

This Special Issue extends that intellectual agenda to the changing relationships among education, technological systems, organisations and working life. It places communication at the centre of questions about how knowledge becomes accessible, credible and consequential for different publics. Universities, workplaces, professional associations, media organisations and communities are examined as interconnected sites in which expertise is produced, exchanged, challenged and recognised.

Special Issue Rationale

Knowledge is central to how people learn, work together, exercise professional judgment and understand shared problems. Yet its public standing depends on more than the availability of information. Knowledge acquires authority through educational practices, institutional arrangements, communicative relationships and forms of social recognition. Technological and organisational change therefore raises a fundamental question: who can contribute to knowledge, whose contributions are trusted, and who can influence how knowledge is used?

For this collection, public knowledge refers to knowledge that enters shared interpretation, discussion and action, together with the conditions that enable people to access, evaluate and contest it. This includes scientific and professional expertise, experiential understanding, community knowledge and cultural interpretation. Organisational knowledge falls within this remit when its production or use has implications for wider publics, professional communities, worker voice, social inclusion or public accountability.

Scholarly Foundations

The transformation of public knowledge raises fundamental questions about how expertise acquires authority, how participation in knowledge production is organised, and how the benefits of knowing are distributed across society. Public knowledge encompasses both claims that become available for collective interpretation and action and the institutional conditions under which those claims can be evaluated, challenged and recognised. Situated learning directs attention to the social practices through which individuals develop expertise and gain membership in knowledge communities (Lave and Wenger 1991), while epistemic injustice illuminates how unequal credibility and interpretive resources restrict whose experiences count as knowledge (Fricker 2007). These perspectives become particularly consequential as digital infrastructures reshape the relationships among educational institutions, organisations and wider publics. Platforms influence the visibility and circulation of knowledge through arrangements of ownership, data and algorithmic selection (van Dijck, Poell and de Waal 2018), while generative AI introduces further questions about how technical outputs acquire public significance and become subject to collective scrutiny (Ananny 2024). Bringing these literatures into conversation, this special issue examines the mechanisms through which technological mediation and institutional practices redistribute epistemic authority: the capacity to establish credible claims, influence shared understanding and contest decisions. Its central concern is how transformations in education and working life alter the relationships between knowledge production, social recognition and public accountability.

The need for this inquiry is sharpened by the coexistence of demonstrable gains in particular settings and unresolved questions about their longer-term institutional consequences. Research on generative AI identifies uneven productivity and learning benefits across workers (Brynjolfsson, Li and Raymond 2025), while evidence on hybrid working demonstrates that changes in working arrangements can improve retention without reducing measured performance in a specific organisational context (Bloom, Han and Liang 2024). Such findings invite closer examination of how improvements in task performance intersect with professional judgment, informal learning and the distribution of voice. The interdependence of automation and augmentation (Raisch and Krakowski 2021), together with the contested character of algorithmic control (Kellogg, Valentine and Christin 2020), suggests that outcomes depend on how technologies are embedded in organisational relationships and negotiated over time. Accordingly, this collection seeks to connect individual experiences of learning and collaboration with organisational arrangements and the wider infrastructures through which knowledge becomes publicly consequential. It invites theoretically grounded, context-sensitive research into when technological and organisational change broadens participation, when it concentrates authority, and how these processes shape education, human interaction and the future of work. The intended contribution is an integrated account of public knowledge as an evolving institutional accomplishment, whose accessibility, credibility and contestability require explanation alongside its productive value.

Why this Academic Discourse is Needed Now?

These debates converge around a shared institutional challenge. Educational systems prepare people to evaluate knowledge and enter professional communities, while organisations increasingly mediate expertise through digital tools and platforms. At the same time, public communication influences which accounts of technological progress, skills and future employment become credible. Studying these processes together can reveal how changes in one setting reshape opportunities and expectations in another.

The collection is timely for three reasons:

1. Distribution of authority as well as efficiency: Decisions about AI, digital infrastructures and working arrangements concern the distribution of authority as well as efficiency. Research is needed on how these decisions are explained, challenged and revised.
2. Addressing dependency, deskilling and unequal participation: Evidence of benefits in particular tasks coexists with unresolved questions about dependency, deskilling, recognition and unequal participation. Comparative and longitudinal inquiry can clarify the conditions under which different outcomes arise.
3. Public trust and social inclusion: Educational and organisational responses have consequences for public trust and social inclusion that cannot be adequately assessed through adoption rates or productivity measures alone.

The proposed contribution is to connect discussions often organised around separate institutional settings through an explicit focus on public knowledge. It does not presume that technology produces a single trajectory of social change. Instead, it invites explanation of the relationships among technological design, institutional choices, human interaction and unequal opportunities to participate. Historical and non-digital studies are equally valuable when they challenge assumptions about novelty or illuminate alternative arrangements.

Central Questions and Intended Contribution

The collection asks how education, technological change and organisational practices reconfigure the public production, recognition and circulation of knowledge, and with what consequences for human interaction and the future of work.

• How do educational and workplace practices shape who can become a recognised contributor to knowledge?
• How do digital infrastructures redistribute expertise, visibility, communicative authority and responsibility?
• Under what conditions do human–AI relationships support learning, critical judgment and meaningful participation?
• How do organisational communication and working arrangements affect voice, trust, collaboration and belonging?
• How are competing visions of skills, professional identity and future work constructed and contested publicly?
• What institutional arrangements enable more inclusive knowledge exchange across professional, cultural and geographical boundaries?

Collectively, contributions should advance concepts, explain mechanisms or identify contextual conditions that improve understanding of these relationships. The issue seeks scholarship relevant to researchers and to educators, professional bodies, organisational leaders, worker representatives, public institutions and civil society.

Scope of the Collection

The following areas are indicative and intentionally wide-ranging. Authors may connect several areas or propose an additional theme that advances the collection’s central concerns. Each paper should make its relationship to public knowledge and communication explicit.

Disciplinary and Methodological Breadth

The collection welcomes contributions from communication and media studies, journalism, education, adult learning, vocational studies, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, philosophy, epistemology, history, linguistics, business management, translation studies, political science, public administration and public policy.

It also invites organisation studies, management, leadership, human resource management and development, industrial relations, labour studies, entrepreneurship, innovation studies, business ethics, economics, information systems, library and information science, science and technology studies, human–computer interaction, design, social and organisational psychology, human geography, development studies, gender studies, disability studies, migration studies, sustainability studies, public health, social work and the digital humanities. Contributions from computing, engineering, law and other professional fields are welcome when their central contribution concerns public knowledge, communication or societal relationships.

Original empirical articles and theoretically developed conceptual contributions are invited. Qualitative, quantitative, mixed-method, comparative, historical, ethnographic, participatory, discourse-analytic and computational approaches are welcome where appropriate to the research question. Critical or integrative reviews should offer a substantive conceptual contribution; their eligibility as a submission format should be agreed with the editors. Case studies should articulate implications beyond their immediate setting. Cross-national data are not a prerequisite for such a contribution.

Authors are encouraged to explain their concepts for an interdisciplinary readership, justify methodological choices and distinguish observed effects from expectations about future developments. Studies of technology adoption, organisational performance or teaching effectiveness should demonstrate a substantive connection to public knowledge, communicative relations or wider social consequences.

Guidance for Submissions

Preparing a Manuscript

The journal’s published Notes for Authors specify a maximum of 50,000 characters, described as approximately 8,000 words. Authors should check the character limit and confirm with the editorial office how supplementary components are counted. Use a Word file, 12-point Times New Roman, single spacing and left-aligned text. Place names and affiliations in a separate file and remove identifying material from the review manuscript. Use author–date citations and follow the journal’s reference examples. Consult the full instructions for figures, tables and notes in the Notes for Authors.

For this collection, a covering letter should identify the special issue by its full title and briefly explain the manuscript’s research question, contribution and fit. Authors should make clear how their paper advances understanding of public knowledge across the educational, technological, organisational or work-related concerns of the collection.

Submission Route and Editorial Assessment

The submission for this special collection can be made only via email at [email protected]

The published journal policy provides for double-blind review, usually by two independent reviewers, with editorial screening for scope and quality. For the special issue, screening will consider relevance, originality, theoretical contribution, methodological rigour and clarity. Invitations or preliminary encouragement will not guarantee acceptance. Please consult our Review procedures.

Research Integrity and Publication Arrangements

Submissions must comply with the journal’s and publisher’s current policies on originality, authorship, competing interests, permissions, research ethics and disclosure of AI use. Authors remain responsible for the accuracy and provenance of all claims, references, data and analyses. Research involving people should explain applicable ethics review, consent and confidentiality arrangements. Relevant data-sharing restrictions should be made clear.

Open-access options, any applicable publication charges and institutional funding arrangements should be checked through the publisher before submission. No special issue fee waiver or funding arrangement is announced in this proposal. Visit the Publisher journal page for details.

Schedule

Call launch, manuscript deadline, review and revision schedule, and anticipated publication date: to be announced following editorial agreement. Any preliminary abstract stage will be specified in the approved call. The collection will follow the journal’s editorial decision-making and production arrangements.

Selected References