Public relations practitioners increasingly turn to artificial intelligence (AI) bots and agentic systems to enhance decision-making, build campaigns, and support stakeholder research. The growth in AI use, however, reflects pressures of neoliberalism influencing everyday practice. Neoliberalism is an ideology that embodies market ideals and a sense of technological inevitability. Within neoliberalism, practitioners may believe they are exercising a degree of autonomy in decision-making, while actually navigating a field pre-structured by market logic and efficiency goals. This article leans on primary theorists Foucault and Bourdieu to explore these AI practices. Interviews with practitioners ( N = 22 ) indicated that neoliberal patterns actively circulate within practitioner AI deployments. They are made apparent in narratives around AI as compulsory to remain competitive, as a mode of self-optimization, and as an efficiency and productivity multiplier. Yet findings revealed the importance of field dispositions (e.g., professional judgment, context, responsibility) within practitioners’ neoliberal habitus. These dispositions reflect the need for a unified approach — fusing human oversight, responsible risk management, and formalized governance — that may bolster professional work. This article concludes that, amid the absence of regulatory frameworks, field dispositions serve an important, even necessary, role for public relations AI implementation.
Public governance is increasingly mediated by algorithmic decision systems and artificial intelligence (AI). While public governance refers to the broader institutional practices through which collective authority is exercised, AI governance designates the more specific arrangements—ethical, technical, and regulatory—through which algorithmic systems themselves are managed; the two are connected because AI governance now reshapes the communicative conditions under which public governance is legitimated. Although prior research has examined AI governance from ethical, technical, and regulatory perspectives, limited attention has been given to how algorithmic authority is communicatively constructed and evaluated. This article reconceptualizes public relations (PR) in algorithmically mediated public-sector environments as legitimacy infrastructure rather than symbolic communication. Drawing on legitimacy theory and core PR traditions—including dialogic communication, organizational listening, transparency, and relationship management—the article argues that in the algorithmic state, PR evolves from strategic messaging to legitimacy infrastructure, becoming embedded in the conditions under which algorithmic authority is experienced and evaluated. It introduces the Legitimacy Infrastructure Model (LIM), which identifies four relational domains—value framing, justificatory signaling, narrative positioning, and trust calibration—through which legitimacy is formed when authority is embedded in socio-technical systems and encountered through system outputs prior to dialogue. The model extends PR theory by reframing legitimacy as a continuous relational accomplishment under infrastructural authority, articulating testable theoretical propositions, and clarifying the advisory and design-sensitive role of communication leadership in AI-enabled public institutions. In doing so, the article positions PR as a constitutive capability shaping how institutional authority is interpreted and evaluated in datafied governance contexts.
Animal agriculture is at the centre of political and social debate due to its negative environmental, ethical, and social impacts. This article analyses the public controversy triggered by the “Less Meat, More Life” campaign launched by the Spanish Ministry of Consumer Affairs to raise awareness about meat consumption and megafarms. Using Discourse Network Analysis (DNA), the study examines how actors competed to shape the dominant interpretation of megafarming in Spanish mainstream media as a result of this campaign. By analysing 270 press articles from 10 Spanish newspapers, the study maps the coalitions of actors that emerged in public discourse, the main arguments they advanced, and how they sought to influence the framing of the debate. The findings reveal the presence of both critical and supportive coalitions, with the former being more prominent and diverse. The study also finds that political and economic arguments dominated the debate, rather than those related to environmental impacts or animal ethics. This debate reflects imbalances in media visibility, which depends not only on journalistic filtering but also on the capacity and power of the actors involved to defend their interests. This research contributes to interdisciplinary studies of communication by showing that the construction of a media-driven social debate involves both journalism and public relations.
