Attributing communication to machines; Die Kommunikativierung der Maschinen

In: Publizistik: Vierteljahreshefte für Kommunikationsforschung, Band 67, Heft 4, S. 475-486

Abstract

AbstractWith chatbots, voice assistants, and social robots oriented towards the ideal of human communication and emulating it in design and fields of application, communication studies is challenged to deal with these "communicating" technical media. In our contribution we argue that for communication science the social theoretical differences between "human" and "machines" are less relevant than the conditions that make it more likely that an attribution of communicative competences to the machine occurs. Drawing on research on mediatization, we show how communication is produced, initiated, and stabilized under contemporary conditions. We then design a model that captures different degrees of attributions of communication to the machine ("Kommunikativierung") driven by three driving forces: (1) the decline of human control over the communication process, (2) the rise of simulation of human mediation of meaning, and (3) the discursive attribution of communication to the machine.