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

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 build...

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