Mehrsprachige Corporate Podcasts durch KI-gestützte Sprachsynthese: Eine empirische Analyse zur Steigerung der Effektivität der internen Unternehmenskommunikation

Abstract

This master's thesis examines the use of AI-supported speech synthesis technology in corporate podcasts for internal communication in internationally active, multilingual companies. The starting point is the increasing importance of flexible and emotionally effective forms of communication against the backdrop of hybrid working models, linguistic diversity, and digital information overload. As an audio format, podcasts offer the opportunity to reach employees regardless of time and location and to convey personal messages authentically. At the same time, the use of artificial intelligencegenerated speech synthesis opens up new potential for the multilingual scalability of internal communication content. The aim of this thesis is to identify the potential and limitations of these technologies and to evaluate their impact on the effectiveness of internal communication. In particular, it will focus on the dimensions of comprehensibility, emotional impact, acceptance, and accessibility. The thesis is divided into a theoretical and an empirical part. The theoretical part highlights key concepts, existing challenges in internal communication, and the current state of research on corporate podcasts and speech synthesis. An analytical category system is developed on this basis. In the empirical part, qualitative, semi-structured interviews are conducted with communication experts and employees from companies that already use corporate podcasts with AI-supported speech synthesis. The evaluation is carried out using qualitative content analysis according to Mayring. The results show that AI-supported, multilingual corporate podcasts are being used by the companies surveyed to increase the effectiveness of internal communication. They make it possible to involve even hard-to-reach employee groups such as production, logistics, or field service teams, as each episode is available in multiple languages at the same time. In addition, automated language versions using text-to-speech and voice cloning result in significant time and cost savings. Overall, multilingual corporate podcasts thus help to achieve key communication goals faster, more efficiently, and in a more inclusive manner.

Date of Award	2025
Original language	German (Austria)
Awarding Institution	Johannes Kepler University Linz
Supervisor	Johann Höller (Supervisor)