This mixed-method study examines (1) how Korean companies communicate AI in strategic communication, (2) how publics respond to such communication, and (3) how practitioners perceive AI adoption, related challenges, and governance mechanisms. This study combines computational analysis of corporate social media posts (Study 1) with in-depth interviews with practitioners (Study 2). Study 1 shows that corporate AI communication is predominantly instrumental, framing AI primarily as business value, an operational enabler, or a means of brand positioning, while giving limited emphasis to its societal and ethical implications. Although AI communication generally receives positive public sentiment, it attracts less engagement and fewer positive comments than non-AI communication. Yet framing AI within the context of CSR mitigates this engagement penalty. AI communication is better received in conventional industries where AI remains relatively novel than in high-tech industries where it is more expected. Study 2 reveals that, despite practitioners’ awareness of AI’s ethical implications, corporate communication continues to prioritize instrumental messaging and remains cautious about integrating CSR into AI communication. These findings advance understanding of strategic AI communication by highlighting the interplay among instrumental and normative communication, public responses, and organizational practice in the high-tech, state-guided context of Korea.
Issues management has a well-established history in public relations and has been widely applied to a wide range of issues. Yet, traditional approaches to research, even qualitative approaches such as interviews, focus groups, and ethnography, cannot always get at the inarticulable core of issues. Art has the power to “come at things differently” (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006, 2008), allowing for new insights to emerge, particularly those at an emotional and visceral level. Yet, in public relations, arts-based research is largely, if not completely, untapped. I argue that arts-based research methods can facilitate a critical engagement approach to issues management that better accounts for power, inclusion, emotions, and the lived experiences of publics, practitioners, and process in our theorizing.
Grounded in issue management and moral foundations theory, this study investigates whether corporate amplification of CEO activism on social media functions as purpose-driven communication or strategic positioning. Analyzing 7347 tweets from Fortune 500 companies from 2017 to 2022, we find that corporate-amplified CEO activism operates at the intersection of moral commitment and strategic calculation. Three key patterns emerge. First, in sociopolitical domains such as public health, environmental sustainability, and workplace equity, companies often approach them through low-maturity or highly contested discourses. This suggests a preference for morally resonant yet unresolved sociopolitical domains. Second, posts employ moral language, particularly emphasizing authority, care, and fairness, which reinforces purpose-driven narratives and enhances emotional connection with stakeholders. Third, engagement varies depending on how moral values and issue maturity interact with each amplified sociopolitical domain. For example, fairness enhances engagement on some equity-related posts, while environmental messages framed as mature issues receive less engagement. These findings suggest that corporate amplification of CEO activism blends values-based purpose with strategic issue selection, allowing companies to expand stakeholder reach and shape public discourse on sociopolitical issues.
Consistent with critical public relations’ attention to power relations and aim of transcending the limits of dominant perspectives, we trace epochs of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) scholarship in public relations to examine disciplinary parameters and historic punctuations, while acknowledging dynamic and ongoing research trends. Our review of these epochs reveals how business case rationales and capitalist ideology continue to transform and reconstitute across time and space to meet sociohistorical moments, suggesting a ‘chameleon effect’ and resilient schema for conceptualizing DEI in the field. We contend that critical research on DEI and public relations can trouble or disrupt underlying ideologies of exclusion embedded in capitalism by addressing central tensions and contradictions such as essentialist vs. processual, episodic vs. systemic transformation, and harmony vs. dissensus. Addressing such tensions situates DEI as a multidimensional struggle in public relations research and practice rather than an idealized end state. We further elucidate a critical DEI approach that balances internal and external communication, academic and applied contexts, as well as historically informed and contemporary communication approaches.
In this article I present the results of a study of the experiences of UK-based Jewish public relations practitioners since the Hamas attacks of October 7th, the onset of the war in Gaza, and rising antisemitism in the UK. Using a tensions and paradox lens, I show how they negotiate tensions both in the wider environment, particularly antizionist forms of antisemitism in public discourse, and in their professional workplaces, in media-related roles as well as in relation to organisational responses to the events. The tensions generated two paradoxes of belonging that challenged a. their right to claim both British and Jewish identity; b. their right to claim a place in their organisational community. The research extends scholarship on tensions and paradoxes in public relations to the professional context, and also illustrates the value of this lens for diversity research focused on understanding the dynamics of marginalisation in the profession.
As AI becomes more ubiquitous and entrenched in our everyday world, students, communication professionals, and researchers are increasingly turning to, or being pushed to use, AI for research, writing, or simply for companionship. While AI is widely framed as enhancing productivity and efficiency, emerging evidence increasingly challenges these claims. Drawing on the paradox of the positive, the hype cycle, and related critical frameworks, this study examines how optimistic narratives surrounding AI obscure its limitations, risks, and structural harms. Through a critical analysis of public relations scholarship, alongside mainstream media coverage of AI, the study explores systemic concerns such as hallucination, misinformation, the erosion of cognitive and professional skills, labor exploitation, environmental costs, and ethical failures rooted in opaque and extractive data practices. The analysis reveals a disconnect between critical stakeholder concerns and the optimistic assumptions reflected in public relations literature and practice that AI supports organization–public relationships or that AI-related risks can be effectively addressed. The article argues that current manifestations of AI often undermine learning, professional judgment, and public trust, and offers recommendations for a more critical and cautious approach to AI use by scholars, educators, and communication professionals.
This study examines government crisis communication and media framing of the Bangladesh Air Force jet crash. Guided by Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), framing theory, and ethics of care, we investigated official response strategies and media coverage of the crisis event. We employed a mixed-methods design that combined thematic analysis of government press releases with computational analysis of 544 news articles. Findings showed that government communication reflected SCCT-consistent strategies, including instructing and adjusting information, corrective action, transparency about systemic weaknesses, and bolstering through heroism and solidarity. Media coverage extended the crisis narrative beyond incident reporting by foregrounding human suffering and public accountability. The analysis also showed that care was communicated through ritualized mourning, victim-centered support, emotional listening, and moral recognition of sacrifice. Based on these findings, we propose a preliminary Care-Centered Government Crisis Communication Framework, showing how meaning-making and crisis legitimacy in state-involved aviation disasters are co-constructed through procedural responsiveness, moral recognition, and media-mediated accountability. The study contributes to crisis communication and government public relations scholarship by centering care, accountability, and cultural context in public-sector crisis response in South Asia.
Relationship management theory (RMT) is central to public relations scholarship, yet its dominant models continue to privilege stability, linearity, and dyadic exchange. This paper argues that advancing RMT requires methodological innovation capable of capturing the lived complexity of organizational–public relationship (OPR). Drawing on an embodied ethnography with five translocal organizations in Southwest China, we demonstrate how embodied ethnography functions as a theory-generative method in public relations. By foregrounding long-term bodily immersion, multisensory engagement, and participatory action, the method renders visible relational dynamics that are difficult to access through formalized interviews or short-term qualitative approaches. From these embodied encounters, we develop the concept of the messiness of relationship management, articulated through two interrelated dimensions: flux, which captures the cyclical and unstable movement of relationships over time, and plurality, which highlights the simultaneous involvement of multiple actors, roles, and cultural logics. We argue that embodied ethnography advances public relations theory by repositioning instability and multiplicity as constitutive features of relationship management rather than analytical anomalies.
This study gathers insight from organizations “on the ground” in the refugee crisis—the NGOs providing support to incoming refugees--to decipher best practices in purpose-driven public relations. In-depth interviews with 19 NGO representatives across NGOs in six European countries illustrate how purpose-driven organizations navigate negative attitudes, engage community stakeholders, and manage crises for crisis-affected publics. Findings suggest imperatives for purpose-driven public relations in a humanitarian crisis. Principles include the interconnected factors of active listening, engaging relevant others, partnership and co-orientation, and facilitating coping among those affected by the crisis. Furthermore, findings also confirm the need for organizational roles in crisis coping.
The transformative force of AI is largely redefining how public relations professionals approach their work, understand their responsibilities, and make sense of the meaning and value associated with being a PR practitioner. While research in other disciplines have increasingly recognized the implications of AI toward professional identities, this topic remains underexplored in the public relations field. Through a quantitative survey (N = 285), we assessed how PR practitioners experience professional identity threats across five dimensions: expertise, status position, autonomy, professional influence, and job responsibility. Our findings highlight that these perceived threats are associated with a combination of factors, including AI use patterns, attitudes and assessment of AI, and influences from leaders and peers. Overall, this study contributes to ongoing conversations about the impact of AI toward the future of public relations through a novel perspective exploring PR professional identities. It also offers practical insights for leaders and organizations on strategies to support PR practitioners in successfully navigating the AI-driven public relations landscape.
This study examines how perceived authorship and relational tone jointly influence audience responses to AI-assisted crisis apologies. Using a 4 (perceived authorship: AI, human, mixed, control) × 2 (relational tone: competence, warmth) factorial design, we investigate whether warmth-focused language can moderate the relationship between AI authorship and perceived sincerity, which in turn influences audience responses to crisis apologies. Results show that apologies perceived as human-authored are evaluated as more sincere, leading to higher trust and forgiveness intentions. In contrast, apologies perceived as AI-authored increase machine heuristic perceptions, which lower perceived sincerity, and subsequently, trust and forgiveness intentions. Warmth moderates the relationship between perceived authorship and sincerity for apologies perceived as human-authored but fails to attenuate the negative indirect effects of machine heuristic processing for apologies perceived as AI-authored. We ground this asymmetric pattern in need for cognitive closure theory, arguing that an unambiguous AI authorship cue triggers cognitive closure on the communicator’s nature, rendering subsequent warmth-focused cues incongruent with the already-formed judgment and therefore discounted. The SCM provides a complementary account of why the AI stereotype resists message-level updating while the human category remains open to elaboration. These findings advance theoretical understanding of divergent audience processing in AI-mediated crisis communication and carry practical implications for how organizations deploy AI in high-stakes apology contexts where authenticity is closely scrutinized.
This study refines the measurement of internal communication satisfaction by deriving and empirically examining a short-form version of the Internal Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire (ICSQ-S). The original 32-item ICSQ was conceptualized as a multidimensional instrument capturing informational, relational, and contextual aspects of internal communication. Yet, in cumulative empirical research, overall scores are frequently used to represent overall internal communication satisfaction. To examine whether such practice is psychometrically justified, this study draws on cross-national survey data from 1458 employees in Croatia, Italy, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom. Exploratory factor analyses using principal axis factoring and oblique rotation were conducted separately in each national sample. A deliberately stringent loading criterion was applied to identify items demonstrating strong and consistent cross-contextual performance. Across all four language versions, a dominant general factor emerged, accounting for the largest proportion of shared variance in each sample. Thirteen items consistently exceeded the retention threshold in every country and were retained for the short form. The resulting ICSQ-S demonstrates excellent internal consistency across national samples and provides a parsimonious measure of overall internal communication satisfaction. These findings support the use of a global operationalization of internal communication satisfaction when facet-level differentiation is not theoretically required, while preserving the multidimensional conceptualization underlying the full ICSQ. The ICSQ-S offers a concise and cross-nationally robust instrument suited to multiconstruct, comparative, and longitudinal research in public relations and internal communication.
This study examines empathy as a form of psychological capital in the public relations profession and investigates how empathy shapes workplace culture in the United States and the United Kingdom. Using data from 903 public relations and advertising practitioners, we measured cognitive and affective empathy through the Basic Empathy Scale (BES) and assessed differences across gender, industry, and country. Consistent with prior research, women reported higher empathy than men across both industries. However, a distinctive pattern emerged among men: male practitioners in public relations scored significantly higher on empathy than their counterparts in advertising, suggesting a prospect for a psychological self-selection process that draws more empathetic men into PR roles. Empathy also positively predicted job satisfaction. These findings reframe PR not only as a feminized profession but as an empathy-based profession. The study empirically confirmed that empathy functions as a foundational psychological capacity of PR practitioners who have predispositions for dialogic and relational communication. We propose an Empathy-Based Psychological Capital Model of Public Relations (EmpCap), positioning PR as an emotionally skilled strategic function whose value extends beyond communication outputs to dialogic dispositions.
Dominant approaches to theorizing public relations have focused on how the practice, as a management function, can benefit corporate outcomes that align with neoliberal, capitalist ends. In contrast, critical scholars have sought to resist these notions by acknowledging how public relations can function to reinforce existing power structures and seeking to reimagine public relations as a cocreational space that can promote democratic participation. To continue to advance critical public relations scholarship, in this paper we introduce the communicative constitution of organizations perspective, with a specific conceptual focus on materiality, as a path forward for the discipline to continue to resist neoliberal logics. In turn, we offer three possible scholarly avenues for critical public relations researchers to pursue to advance critical scholarship in the discipline through the application of a constitutive approach to materiality. Specifically, we focus on advancing critical scholarship related to: (1) publics, (2) crisis communication, and (3) advocacy and activism.
This study examines factors driving Gen Z's involvement in gun violence prevention advocacy using a process model grounded in collective action, identity, and public relations research. Using 263 survey responses, we conducted structural equation modeling (SEM) and found that self-identity significantly predicted dialogic, online, and symbolic advocacy behaviors, whereas anger predicted online advocacy behaviors and group efficacy predicted symbolic advocacy behaviors. Neither anger nor group efficacy predicted dialogic advocacy behaviors. Moral conviction and involvement recognition consistently predicted self-identity, while perceived injustice and involvement recognition predicted anger. The results provide mixed support for antecedents such as moral conviction and perceived injustice, offering insight into motivations for pro-social engagement among Gen Z.
Given growing evidence of well-being challenges among public relations and communication professionals, this study investigates the role of empathetic leadership in supporting this workforce, which is vulnerable to numerous distinct stressors that threaten their well-being. An online survey was conducted with 983 full-time public relations and communication professionals in the United States and Canada. The results indicated that empathetic leadership significantly improved job engagement and affective organizational commitment, while mitigating burnout. Burnout, in turn, was positively associated with turnover intention, whereas affective organizational commitment was negatively associated with it. These findings suggest empathetic leadership is a crucial factor in promoting well-being and reducing turnover rates among public relations and communication professionals.
This conceptual essay advances critical public relations scholarship by introducing the identity chutney framework as a multidimensional, intersectional approach to organizational diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) communication. This essay argues that organizational DEI discourse privileges demographic markers of identity such as ethnicity and gender while marginalizing personal and professional dimensions. This reductive framing risks misaligning organizational DEI communication with the lived realities of stakeholders whose identities are increasingly fluid and complex. In response, the identity chutney framework conceptualizes identity as integrated. Drawing on theories of identity, signaling, and stakeholder identification, the framework proposes that effective organizational DEI communication should blend dimensions of personal identity (such as personality traits and interests), social identity (such as gender and ethnicity), and professional identity (such as skills and expertise). Like chutney, its value lies not in any single component but in the richness created through their integration. By emphasizing authentic storytelling, purpose-driven messaging, and the alignment of visual and narrative cues, the identity chutney framework advances existing DEI communication approaches by better reflecting the complexities of intersectionality across multiple identity dimensions. The identity chutney framework contributes to critical public relations that reframes public relations as a practice accountable to humanity and attentive to inequality, by offering a more nuanced lens that advances social justice by foregrounding the heterogeneity of lived experiences, obscured by mass categorizations of the marginalized.
Social media is an indispensable component of strategic communication and public life in China, positioning it as a central arena for crisis communication research. As social-mediated crisis communication (SMCC) scholarship expands, questions arise not only about what has been studied, but how methodological choices shape theory development. This study conducts a mixed-method review of 105 articles published between 2009 and 2025 in 15 SSCI-indexed journals spanning communication, public relations, risk and crisis management, and new media studies. By integrating manual coding, structural topic modeling (STM), and network analysis, the study demonstrates how mixed-method computational reviews can function as a theory-building device. Rather than cataloging topics, this approach maps the alignment between research topics, theoretical frameworks, and contextual dimensions, revealing under-theorized areas and methodological lock-ins. It identifies 13 research topics, highlights government-focused research as central, notes uneven use of framing theory and SCCT, and recognizes economic factors as an emerging contextual dimension. Overall, this study not only contributes methodological and theoretical insights to crisis communication scholarship by foregrounding China’s distinctive digital, institutional, and sociopolitical environment but also illuminates the theoretical and thematic blind spots generated by Western-influenced research agendas in engaging with the complex realities of non-Western societies.
Governments implement public diplomacy campaigns to manage foreign perceptions and build reputational security. We examine Global Ireland 2025 as a case of grand strategy in political public relations, designed to repair the reputational damage of Ireland's 2008-2018 economic collapse and financial crisis. Focusing on organizational storytelling, we use a discourse analysis to identify and map the strategic narratives the government employed to cultivate perceptions of a stronger, more secure Ireland. Based on policy documents, the Irish government adopted a cooperative grand strategy, emphasizing identity narratives of global citizenship, system narratives of interdependence, and intermestic issue narratives speaking both to domestic and foreign publics. This reinforced Ireland's cultural identity as forged from historical trauma to rebuild the national selfconfidence and project that strength abroad to repair the reputational damage inflicted by the European Union's bailout. This lends a perceived authenticity, legitimacy, and credibility with which Ireland can effectively counter adversarial narratives, persuade skeptics, and mobilize allies in pursuit of its security and prosperity. This expands public relations scholarship by contextualizing public diplomacy as the securitization of reputation management and trauma as a foundation for national identity formation and projection. Further, it informs public relations practice by demonstrating how grand strategy campaigns can be evaluated.
