New Media Logic and the Reconstruction of Consumer Decision Processes in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

OpenAlex Türkçe

This theoretical paper argues that the convergence of new media logic and artificial intelligence is inextricably restructuring consumer decision-making, which classical cognitive models are ill-equipped to account for. Based on a synthesis of the literature spanning media logic, platformisation, algorithmic culture and AI in marketing, this paper will revisit the canonical five-stage decision process —need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase and post-purchase— showing how every stage is being transformed through recommendation systems, conversational agents, predictive analytics and datafied feedback loops. The analysis articulates the figure of the algorithmically mediated consumer, marked by distributed agency, recursive temporality and reflexive opacity. The paper does not reject the inherited models but instead reframes them as heuristic devices whose limits become apparent once it is recognised that algorithmic mediation does not merely surround the decision environment but actively constitutes it. This contribution is primarily theoretical in nature and paves the way for empirical research across different cultural contexts.