From Letters to LINE to AI: Reframing Organizational Communication Norms in the Digital Era

Abstract

From letters to instant messaging and now to AI-generated texts, organizational communication norms are undergoing profound transformation. This study introduces the Communication Reframing Framework to theorize how communication evolves across three stages—formal, instant, and intelligent communication—each reshaping efficiency, politeness, emotional authenticity, and trust. At the core of this framework lies the Human–AI Hybrid Subject, an interactional unit reflecting the shift toward “hybrid intelligence” that generates artificial politeness: standardized, function-oriented courtesy produced without human intentionality. While such expressions sustain surface harmony and accelerate exchanges, they simultaneously erode authenticity and shift the foundation of trust from interpersonal sincerity to message credibility. Existing theories—including Media Richness Theory, Politeness Theory, and traditional Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) models—struggle to fully account for these changes because they largely assume human authorship and fixed media attributes. This study reconceptualizes richness as dynamically augmentable, extends politeness theory by drawing on the Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) paradigm, and reframes trust as transitioning from emotional authenticity to epistemic reliability in AI-mediated contexts. Finally, the study considers how cultural context moderates these normative shifts. Practically, the framework warns organizations and leaders that efficiency gains through AI should not come at the expense of authenticity and relational trust. The future of workplace communication will depend not only on speed and automation but also on the ability to strategically blend AI-generated efficiency with the uniquely human capacities of sincerity, empathy, and cultural resonance.