Communicative AI and Techno-Semiotic Mediatization: Understanding the Communicative Role of the Machine

Mediatization discourse has so far mainly been centered on media from institutional or social-constructionist approaches. The technological developments within communications industries coupled with the wider societal process of datafication might, however, beg for dusting off the smaller, although the long-time existing, technological approach to mediatization as a complement to the two other approaches, in order to understand aspects of automation and human-machine communication. This theoretical article explores how existing mediatization approaches can refocus to include lessons learned from human-machine communication. The first section accounts for the main mediatization approaches. The second section discusses debates on communication, artificiality, and meaning-making. The last section takes the example of the recruitment interview for discussing how mediatization theory can benefit from including a technological approach with an influx from human-machine communication, as well as how human-machine communication can learn from wider discussions within mediatization theory.