WHEN MACHINES BECOME THE AUDIENCE: RETHINKING COMMUNICATION THEORY IN THE AGE OF GENERATIVE AI

Trinanjan Gupta

doi:10.29121/ShodhVichar.v2.i3.2026.140

Authors

Trinanjan Gupta CSR Officer, CSR Department/Qatar Steel, Doha, Qatar Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29121/ShodhVichar.v2.i3.2026.140

Keywords:

Algorithmic Communication Readiness, Generative AI, Human-Machine Communication, Digital Media, Algorithmic Gatekeeping, Source Credibility

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence alters a long-standing assumption in communication theory: that a human receiver encounters the message that a communicator releases. Today, computational systems often retrieve, rank, combine, and rewrite public information before a person sees it. This article develops Algorithmic Communication Readiness (ACR), defined as the capacity of a communicator’s public digital record to support accurate, consistent, and well-evidenced machine interpretation while preserving meaning for people. The study uses an integrative conceptual review and theory-building process informed by human-machine communication, AI-mediated communication, machine agency, gatekeeping, media ecology, signalling, source credibility, and affordance theory. The review identifies four constitutive dimensions of ACR: semantic clarity, identity consistency, evidential density, and cross-platform coherence. Machine-human interpretive alignment is repositioned as the model’s immediate outcome rather than as a fifth dimension. The model also introduces machine interpretive noise to describe omission, distortion, decontextualization, and unsupported synthesis in AI-generated accounts. Six propositions explain how ACR may shape alignment and, in turn, influence perceived accuracy and credibility. The article contributes a communication-centred account of the public digital record as material that is increasingly read by both people and computational systems. It concludes with implications for journalism, public relations, public institutions, science communication, and media literacy, and outlines a programme for scale development, experiments, longitudinal audits, and cross-language research.

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