Review article
https://doi.org/10.47960/2712-0457.2026.S2.8.181
FROM VISIBILITY TO AUTHORSHIP: GENERATIVE AI AND MEANING MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC RELATIONS
Tonina Ibrulj
orcid.org/0009-0009-2811-3772
; University of Mostar, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina
*
Vladimir Ruf
orcid.org/0000-0002-5718-0925
; University of Mostar, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Željka Perić
; University North, Varaždin, Hrvatska
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
Generative AI systems increasingly describe organizations to publics in texts that no one has written. Following the typology approach to conceptual articles, the paper develops a typology of algorithmic mediation within Meaning Management Theory in Public Relations, introduces the concept of machine-mediated sensegiving, and formulates testable propositions on the conditions under which generated descriptions of organizations remain consistent. It distinguishes selective mediation, in which a system chooses among published texts, from generative mediation, in which a system composes a description on request; the two differ in whether the description has an intending author and whether it exists as a published text. Under current implementations, generated descriptions tend not to be reproduced identically. The paper proposes that organizations can shift the central tendency of these descriptions and reduce their dispersion, though not below a floor set by the generation process itself, by shaping the material available to systems, a practice it calls machine-mediated sensegiving. Read semiotically, the generated description is a second-order description in Barthes’s sense, one that can naturalize a characterization of the organization without anyone intending it. The argument extends Meaning Management Theory, shows that under generative mediation the value of interpretive stability depends on ethical inclusiveness, a moderator the theory already provides, and extends agenda-setting research on corporate reputation. Four propositions with hypotheses and a two-arm research design are formulated.
Keywords
meaning management; algorithmic mediation; generative AI; machinemediated sensegiving; corporate reputation
Hrčak ID:
353045
URI
Publication date:
1.11.2026.
Visits: 0 *