Algorithmic Governance and Public Communication in Smart Cities: A Systematic Review and Critical Framework for AI-Mediated Civic Life

Abstract

This paper examines how algorithmic governance in smart cities is transforming public communication, civic agency, and collective life. Although scholarship on AI-mediated urban communication is expanding, it remains fragmented across technical, sociotechnical, and ethical domains. Through a systematic review of research on smart city communication, platform governance, and algorithmic publics, the paper argues that AI infrastructures do not simply reorganize information flows—they recast the ontological and communicative status of the human within civic environments. Drawing on Heidegger’s notion of enframing, post humanist theory, and insights from philosophical theology, the study shows how algorithmic systems increasingly position citizens as datafied components of technical apparatuses. In this condition, agency becomes diffused, responsibility opaque, and communication instrumentalized for prediction and control. The review identifies three recurring dynamics: the displacement of civic agency, the formation of algorithmic publics, and techno-eschatological narratives that promise order and redemption through data-driven governance. In response, the paper proposes a Critical Communication Framework for AI-mediated civic life, emphasizing humanistic values and ethical responsibility. It concludes that the humanities are essential for safeguarding meaning, deliberation, and civic freedom in an age of automated reason.