Ghost Framing Theory: Exploring the role of generative AI in new venture rhetorical legitimation

TL;DR

Ghost Framing Theory (GFT) explains how hybrid human-AI ensembles influence the legitimation process of new ventures through recursive, resonant framing practices enabled by generative AI's unique affordances.

Contribution

Introduces Ghost Framing Theory, a new framework for understanding AI-assisted entrepreneurial legitimation, integrating sociomaterial affordances and multi-actor dynamics.

Findings

Identifies key generative AI rhetorical affordances

Proposes a recursive process model for AI-human framing interactions

Extends affordance theory to multi-actor entrepreneurial contexts

Abstract

Responding to the surging but largely invisible use of generative AI in entrepreneurial framing, I advance Ghost Framing Theory (GFT) to explain how hybrid founder- and investor-genAI ensembles co-produce, contest, and recalibrate resonance in the rhetorical legitimation of new ventures. Building on scholarship in framing, micro-level legitimacy judgments, and sociomaterial affordances, I identify genAI rhetorical affordances (generativeness, extreme combinatorics, tone repertoire, velocity/energy and shared substratum) and theorize a recursive/iterative process model (ghost pitching, ghost screening, ghost relationship-building), configuring emergent resonance and legitimation. GFT builds new rhetorical framing theory for the age of genAI, connects research on human-AI collaboration with cultural entrepreneurship and extends affordance theory into multi-actor scenarios where affordance transitivity and visibility emerge as key considerations.