Why the EU’s Technosolutionist Focus on AI and Media ‘Literacy’ Empowers Big Tech: Centering Structural Approaches to Counter the Undemocratic Political Economy of Surveillance Capitalism

The emergence of digital technologies during the last two decades has placed strain on democracies globally. From disinformation to artificial intelligence (AI), policy-makers have struggled to address the authoritarian and anti-democratic tendencies that Big Tech companies have been pushing. A dominant response from European Union (EU) policy-makers has been to promote ‘literacy’: media literacy to address disinformation, and ‘AI literacy’ to foster constructive uses of AI. We ask: what does it mean for the EU to use media literacy and AI literacy as a response to disinformation and the risks of AI? More broadly, what kind of policy and model of democracy is being constructed when the EU suggests that the solution to disinformation and AI depends on citizens becoming more “literate”? We empirically examine the usage of ‘literacy’ in EU policy documents in the context of disinformation and AI, and argue that it shifts responsibility from platforms to individual citizens. In doing so, it moves attention away from a structural approach into the political economy of Big Tech companies, hence empowering them and their ‘surveillance capitalist’ business model. This article argues instead that literacy needs to be rethought beyond individual skills, as a way of making visible the structural and infrastructural power of privately owned digital systems shaping contemporary public spheres. Therefore, reclaiming democracy requires moving beyond individual adaptation, and instead towards addressing the underlying systemic structures of Big Tech power.