Writing trust in the age of generative AI: special interest magazines and embodied expertise

Abstract

This article examines how English-language cycling magazines rhetorically negotiate generative AI. Drawing on interpretive rhetorical analysis of purposively selected, publicly accessible reader-facing materials, it argues that AI poses a distinctive challenge because the authority of special interest magazines depends on recognisable human authorship, embodied expertise and reader trust. It develops the ‘slow middle’ as a conceptual framework for understanding how these publications position themselves within careful, expert and community-oriented cultural production, distinct from automated, high-volume online content. Viewed through this framework, two recurring rhetorical patterns emerge from the textual sample: limited public disclosure concerning AI's role in editorial production; and the positioning of AI as an object of scrutiny, tool for reader utility or topic of coverage, rather than an authorial presence. These patterns demonstrate how special interest magazines preserve claims to human expertise and trustworthy narrative authority while remaining formative rhetorical environments for communal responses to technological change.