Micro-media networks as a decentralized medium; A documentary and data-driven analysis of architecture, efficacy, ethical governance, and soft-power capacity at regional and global scales

Abedi, Roohollah; Bashir, Hassan

doi:10.22059/jcss.2026.416690.1254

Micro-media networks as a decentralized medium; A documentary and data-driven analysis of architecture, efficacy, ethical governance, and soft-power capacity at regional and global scales

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original article

Authors

Roohollah Abedi ¹

Hassan Bashir ²

¹ Department of Media Management, University of Religions and Denominations, Qom, Iran.

² Department of International Communication, Imam Sadiq University, Tehran, Iran.

10.22059/jcss.2026.416690.1254

Abstract

Background: Declining engagement with linear news and persistent institutional distrust have renewed interest in human-mediated distribution. For public or state media, however, interpersonal proximity can contribute to trust repair only when editorial reform is demonstrable and institutional relationships remain transparent.
Aims: This article develops Micro-Media Networks as a human-centered, decentralized trust-repair infrastructure for a public or state media organization that has already undertaken demonstrable editorial reform. The model is not intended to disguise institutional messages or bypass an inherited trust deficit. Rather, it seeks to make truthful, source-transparent, corrigible content socially accessible and contestable through professionally autonomous human intermediaries. The article grounds the model in network society, social capital and weak ties, persuasion psychology, choice architecture, and AI-governance scholarship; reviews secondary evidence relevant to networked-human distribution; and proposes an auditable governance framework separating the model from astroturfing and hypernudge.
Methodology: The study follows a documentary-library method: systematic literature retrieval from Scopus and Web of Science, appraisal using Scott's four criteria, and qualitative content analysis. Quantitative material is drawn from secondary analysis of sources with heterogeneous evidentiary status—peer-reviewed research, official intergovernmental statistics, multinational survey reports, Google Trends, industry compilations, and Iranian online media surveys. These sources are used as contextual and convergent evidence rather than as a causal test of the proposed architecture.
Results: Convergent secondary evidence indicates a shift in attention and news access from linear institutional channels toward platform-based and human-mediated distribution, especially among younger cohorts; it does not test the proposed model itself. In response, the article proposes a three-tier architecture—an organizational core, a ring of professionally autonomous civic intermediaries, and a volunteer civic network—and formulates eight hypothesized structural advantages for future testing. A bounded AI co-pilot assists nodes without profiling individual audience vulnerabilities or replacing human judgment. The five-principle governance framework is supplemented by polycentric oversight: an Independent Public Trust Council, distributed public evaluation, and periodic academic-technical audit. Three conditional pathways illustrate how a transparently governed and empirically validated network might contribute to transnational soft power.
Conclusion: Micro-Media Networks offer a conditional framework for making institutional reform socially observable through autonomous human mediation. Their trust-repair and soft-power potential depends on transparent sponsorship, cognitive autonomy, and independent oversight. The model requires empirical validation before claims of efficacy or large-scale implementation can be justified.

Keywords

AI governance

choice architecture

decentralized media

documentary method

horizontal trust

micro-media networks

social capital

soft power

Subjects

media

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