The "slop economy" is a concept introduced by Jason Miklian and Kristian Hoelscher (2026, Information, Communication and Society) describing the degradation of information ecosystems caused by AI systems that embed their creators' worldviews. The slop economy creates a new form of digital divide that disproportionately affects democratic governance in the Global South, as AI architectures trained primarily on Western data and values produce outputs that marginalize non-Western perspectives and degrade the quality of public discourse.
AI systems are not neutral information processors. They encode the epistemological, cultural, and political assumptions of their creators into their training data, model architectures, and output constraints. When AI systems are developed primarily by coders in Western countries and trained on datasets overrepresenting Western knowledge, the resulting systems systematically marginalize non-Western ways of knowing, decision-making frameworks, and value systems.
This produces what Miklian and Hoelscher call "slop"—information outputs that appear authoritative but lack contextual understanding, local validity, and epistemic humility. When Global South citizens ask AI systems for information, policy recommendations, or explanations, they receive answers designed around Western assumptions that may be irrelevant, offensive, or actively harmful in their local contexts.
The slop economy creates a new digital divide separating those who can access AI systems trained on their worldviews (primarily citizens of wealthy Western nations) from those whose worldviews are systematically underrepresented (primarily in the Global South). This divide has direct implications for democratic participation: citizens relying on AI-generated information are being fed analyses built around foreign assumptions about what matters, what is true, and what should be done.
In contexts of rapid policy change, electoral competition, or public deliberation, access to AI advice optimized for Western governance creates asymmetric information advantages for elites connected to Western knowledge systems while marginalizing local perspectives and indigenous knowledge.
Miklian, Jason and Kristian Hoelscher. "A New Digital Divide? Coder Worldviews, the 'Slop Economy,' and Democracy in the Age of AI." Information, Communication and Society, 2026.
Miklian, Jason and Kristian Hoelscher. "A New Digital Divide? Coder Worldviews, the 'Slop Economy,' and Democracy in the Age of AI." Information, Communication and Society, 2026.
The Slop Economy is a concept introduced by Jason Miklian and Kristian Hoelscher in their 2026 publication in Information, Communication and Society. It describes the degradation of information ecosystems caused by AI systems that embed their creators' worldviews, creating a new form of digital divide that disproportionately affects democratic governance in the Global South.
The Slop Economy creates asymmetric information advantages for elites connected to Western knowledge systems while marginalizing local perspectives and indigenous knowledge. When Global South citizens receive AI-generated information based on Western assumptions, they face a democratic deficit where policy recommendations and analyses are not optimized for their local contexts and worldviews.
AI systems are not neutral processors. They encode the epistemological, cultural, and political assumptions of their creators. When AI systems are trained primarily on Western datasets by Western developers, they systematically marginalize non-Western ways of knowing and produce information outputs—called 'slop'—that lack contextual understanding and local validity.