Organizations have begun using artificial intelligence (AI) not only to produce CSR communication but also to set CSR agendas. In these applications an algorithmic system identifies social issues, ranks candidate projects, and recommends allocations that managers then review. How publics evaluate CSR initiatives disclosed as originating this way remains underexplored. Drawing on attribution theory, this study proposes that the disclosed decision-maker operates as a source cue shaping perceived organizational capability (competence, fairness, and transparency), attributions of public-serving motive, and perceived CSR authenticity. In an online experiment, 517 U.S. adults recruited through Dynata read a corporate press release describing an identical CSR initiative attributed either to an AI system or to a human team. Participants who read the AI-led disclosure reported lower competence, fairness, transparency, public-serving motive attributions, and perceived CSR authenticity. Capability judgments predicted motive attributions, which in turn predicted perceived authenticity. The disclosed initiator shifted the level of these judgments without altering the structure of the process. Attitudes toward AI moderated the effect of the disclosure on capability perceptions, whereas AI literacy did not. The study positions AI as a decision-making agent in public relations and identifies perceived CSR authenticity as an attributional endpoint.
Despite widespread workplace challenges facing employees from socially disadvantaged groups, empirical research examining how peer communication shapes these employees' experiences remains underexplored in internal communication research. Drawing on a survey of 439 U.S. racial and ethnic minority employees, this exploratory study conceptualizes and investigates allyship communication - communication initiated by employees from socially advantaged groups to support their colleagues from disadvantaged groups. We examined the associations between effective and ineffective allyship communication and minority employees' engagement and disengagement, with authenticity at work and psychological safety as mediators. Results showed that effective allyship communication was positively associated with engagement both directly and through psychological safety, and negatively associated with disengagement through psychological safety. Conversely, ineffective allyship communication was positively associated with disengagement both directly and indirectly through authenticity at work. This study contributes to internal communication research on peer communication in diverse workplaces by introducing allyship communication as a distinct construct and revealing asymmetrical associations between its effective and ineffective forms and employee engagement and disengagement. We conclude with actionable insights for communication professionals seeking to foster inclusive workplaces.
Public relations (PR) researchers have often studied activism as a tool for historically oppressed groups and social justice efforts, which often earn left-wing labels. Although these investigations are vital for sociocultural PR theory and addressing historic injustice, scholarship has not yet wrestled with activism for socially advantaged groups, which has tended to align with right-wing interests. Therefore, this theoretical article presents a specific activist approach that often complements the political right, revanchist activism, as a phenomenon where historically dominant groups seek to reclaim sociocultural power through collective grievance. We offer revanchist tenets of traditional power structures, societal entropy, and retribution to explain how these manifest in the New Right social movement and its 1970s initiative, Stop Taking Our Privileges Equal Rights Amendment (STOP ERA). Using STOP ERA and its leader, Phyllis Schlafly, as a backdrop, we offer propositions of revanchist activism as reclaiming morality, reclaiming information, and reclaiming status. Consequently, this article contributes to sociocultural PR theory and practice about activism by layering ideology and approach for political nuance, distinguishing grievance from historical marginalization, and outlining a past, yet contemporarily and practically relevant, activist context.
AI service failures pose novel crisis communication challenges to corporations. Guided by Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), two experiments examine how AI agency locus (human-agency vs. machine-agency) and AI failure type (competence-violation vs. integrity-violation) shape public reactions toward AI. service failure crises, and how different crisis communication strategies (information provision vs. apology vs. mirror vs. excuse) influence crisis outcomes under varying AI agency locus conditions. Study 1 (N = 240) reveals that human-agency (vs. machine-agency) AI failures and AI integrity-violations (vs. competence-violations) inflict greater harm to the corporation. Study 2 (N = 560) demonstrates that the apology strategy most effectively mitigates corporate crisis damage, whereas diminish (e.g. excuse) and denial (e.g. mirror) strategies are suboptimal - though nuanced differences emerge across conditions. The results extend SCCT by introducing AI agency locus and AI failure type as dimensions for classifying AI service failure crises from a media evocation perspective, offering actionable insights for corporate communication.
