Researching mediated texts from offline to AI: continuities and disruptions

Abstract

Researching media texts such as advertising has evolved from studying language as a linking, communal experience constituting a speech community to a mass individualized experience with the fragmenting effects of digital communication and the mainstreaming of large language models. This has involved a shift from the medium being regarded as the site of the text through an increasingly stronger focus on mediatization to the current situation where the one technology can be the site, source, and tool for collecting and analysing the data. Disruptions in the processes of production have led to changes in the types of data, ways of collecting, and ways of analysing. A key challenge of mass individualization and the interactional experience offered by large language models is the ever-changing nature of the texts produced and the difficulty of capturing the fragmented, individual experience with these texts.