Crowd forensics and warrant braiding: Collaborative persuasion knowledge in AI influencer threads

Saxena, Prashant; Prahl, Andrew

doi:10.1080/00913367.2026.2711050

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Accepted, in production

Crowd forensics and warrant braiding.

Journal of Advertising · Routledge, Taylor & Francis

ABDC 2025 ASJR 2025 Q1AJG 2024 3SJR value 4.201h-index 151

Accepted for publication. DOI registered; the link resolves once the article publishes.

Saxena, P., & Prahl, A. (in press). Crowd forensics and warrant braiding: Collaborative persuasion knowledge in AI influencer threads. Journal of Advertising. DOI 10.1080/00913367.2026.2711050

DOI 10.1080/00913367.2026.2711050

What the study finds

Public comment threads become forensic investigations. One viewer's private suspicion turns into the next viewer's public cue.

Where it sits in the programme

This is one of six studies testing synthetic authenticity across care, social robots, AI influencers, classrooms, shopping agents and companion AI. Definitions for every construct used here are on the concepts page. The full programme, with journal standing for each venue, is on the research page.

← The transparency tax When advice goes public →

Synthetic Authenticity is Prashant Saxena’s research programme on how AI personas, including social robots, virtual influencers, companions, advisers and shopping agents, earn, exercise and lose legitimacy. It examines what makes an artificial persona appropriate enough to trust, buy from, learn from, disclose to or permit to act, and where acceptance turns into scrutiny, resistance or dependence. Written for CMOs, policymakers, deans, AI builders, communications leaders and the media.

Prashant Saxena is a Singaporean practitioner-scholar who coined the term Synthetic Authenticity. He researches AI personas at Nanyang Technological University, teaches at business schools, and leads revenue for Isentia across Southeast Asia, where he advises government agencies and brands.

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A personal research site. Views are the author’s own and are not those of Isentia or Nanyang Technological University. Disclosures, affiliations and data provenance.

AI-persona photographs and open assets via Wikimedia Commons: Willy Jackson, Xavier Care, RuinDig/Yuki Uchida, ITU Pictures, Tekniska museet/Peter Hall, and public-domain AI-generated media. Care and shopping-agent interface assets generated for Synthetic Authenticity. Graded to site palette.