Automated Communication’s Impact on Strategic Communication: Implications from a Systematic Review

Figures & data

Figure 1. PRISMA flow diagram of the systematic review (adapted from Page et al., 2021).

Figure 2. Publications by year and journal field.

Table 1. Proposed typology of automated communication.

Type	Count (Type)	Subtype	Count (Subtype)	Specific automated communication phenomenon	Count (Specific phenomenon)
AI agent	54	Communicative agent	34	AI influencer	10
				AI lecturer	1
				Chatbot	17
				Social bot	4
				Voice assistant	4
				Unspecified agent	2
		Generative agent	21	AI journalist	20
				AI text agent	1
AI-generated content	32	AI-generated text	22	AI-generated news story	19
				AI-generated text (general)	2
				AI-generated poem	1
		AI-generated audio/visual content	12	AI-generated video	9
				AI-generated image	5
				AI-generated audio clip	2
				AI-generated painting	1

This table provides an overview of the identified types, subtypes, and specific automated communication phenomena discussed in the sample. The categorisation was done by the authors (i.e., the included articles may refer to the phenomena with differing terms). Since some of the included articles have discussed more than one type, subtype, or specific automated communication phenomenon, the respective counts may exceed the total number of included articles. The count refers to the number of articles in which a type, subtype, or specific automated communication phenomenon was discussed.

Table 2. Investigated automated communication phenomena according to context.

Context	Type	Subtype	Specific automated communication phenomenon	Count (Specific phenomenon)
Journalism	AI agent	Communicative agent	Chatbot	1
		Generative agent	AI journalist	19
	AI-generated content	AI-generated text	AI-generated news story	18
Marketing	AI agent	Communicative agent	AI influencer	9
			Chatbot	10
			Voice assistant	2
			Unspecified agent	2
	AI-generated content	AI-generated audio/visual content	AI-generated image	2
			AI-generated video	2
Political communication	AI agent	Communicative agent	Social bot	1
	AI-generated content	AI-generated text	AI-generated news story	1
		AI-generated audio/visual content	AI-generated audio clip	1
			AI-generated video	4
General communication	AI agent	Communicative agent	Chatbot	1
			Social bot	1
			Voice assistant	2
		Generative agent	AI journalist	1
			AI text agent	1
	AI-generated content	AI-generated text	AI-generated text (general)	2
		AI-generated audio/visual content	AI-generated audio clip	1
			AI-generated image	2
			AI-generated video	2
Education	AI agent	Communicative agent	AI lecturer	1
			Chatbot	2
General human-machine communication	AI agent	Communicative agent	AI influencer	1
			Chatbot	2
Culture	AI-generated content	AI-generated text	AI-generated poem	1
		AI-generated audio/visual content	AI-generated image	1
			AI-generated painting	1
			AI-generated video	1
Health communication	AI agent	Communicative agent	Social bot	1
Science communication	AI agent	Communicative agent	Chatbot	1
Strategic communication /PR	AI agent	Communicative agent	Social bot	1

Table 3. Theories applied most often in automated communication research.

Field	Theory	Count (Theory)	Origin	Example
Communication	Computers Are Social Actors paradigm	7	Nass and Moon (2000); Reeves and Nass (1996)	Arsenyan and Mirowska (2021)
	Expectancy Violations Theory	5	Burgoon (1978); Burgoon and Jones (1976)	Waddell (2019a)
	Modality-Agency-Interactivity-Navigability model	4	Sundar (2008)	Waddell (2019b)
	Technology Acceptance Model	4	Davis (1989)	Rese et al. (2020)
	Uses & Gratifications Theory	3	Katz et al. (1973)	Cheng and Jiang (2020)
Psychology	Uncanny Valley Theory	4	Mori (1970)	Lou et al. (2022)

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