When the algorithm is the message: GenAI as educational environment

Abstract

This article addresses the impact of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) on education from a media ecology perspective. GenAI configures a new linguistic environment that alters the conditions under which knowledge is produced, circulated, and validated. Far from being limited to the automated generation of content, these systems reorganize attention, accelerate information flows, and displace traditional practices of authorship and learning. GenAI must be understood as a media environment transformation rather than a specific pedagogic tool. McLuhan's notion that "the medium is the message" drives us to consider the structural effects this technology produces on perception, cognition, and the social organization of learning, more than focusing on the contents it creates. The analysis highlights how algorithmic mediation introduces an epistemological shift that challenges pedagogical models centered on the transmission and control of content. In response to this scenario, the article proposes algorithmic literacy as a central axis of education. Such literacy aims to strengthen agency and critical understanding in digital environments. It also seeks to enhance the capacity to construct meaning in educational contexts shaped by automated systems.