International Journal of Strategic Communication

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Strategic Communication (In partnership with the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication)

Background and Rationale
Artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally transforming the processes, practices, and dynamics of strategic communication. From automated content generation and algorithmic targeting to predictive analytics and synthetic media, AI systems are increasingly embedded in how organizations communicate with stakeholders. These developments raise ethical questions about authorship, accountability, persuasion, transparency, and truth.
Strategic communication has long been concerned with influence, relationship-building, and meaning-making (Hallahan et al., 2007). However, AI complicates these foundational assumptions by introducing non-human agents into communicative processes, often operating with opacity and scale that exceed human oversight (Pasquale, 2015). Generative AI, in particular, challenges traditional notions of message control and authenticity, enabling the rapid production of persuasive content that may blur distinctions between human and machine-generated communication (Floridi et al., 2018; Kreps, McCain, & Brundage, 2022).
At the same time, AI systems are not neutral tools. They reflect and reproduce social biases embedded in training data and design choices, raising concerns about fairness, representation, and harm across diverse publics (Benjamin, 2023; Noble, 2018). In strategic communication contexts, such as public relations, advertising, and political messaging, these biases can shape who is heard, how messages are framed, which audiences are targeted, and lead to novel and nuanced message effects.
Emerging technologies such as deepfakes, voice cloning, and emotion AI introduce new forms of persuasive capability that challenge ethical boundaries around manipulation, consent, and trust (Chesney & Citron, 2019; Hancock, Naaman, & Levy, 2020). These developments call for renewed attention to normative frameworks that can guide responsible AI use in communication practice (Floridi & Cowls, 2022), as well as empirical research examining how stakeholders perceive and respond to AI-mediated communication.
This special issue invites scholarship that examines the ethical implications of AI in strategic communication from multiple methodological and theoretical perspectives, including normative, empirical, and computational approaches.

Topics of Interest
We welcome conceptual, empirical, and methodological contributions addressing (but not limited to):
• Algorithmic ethics in strategic decision-making
• Ethical frameworks for evaluating AI-generated communication content
• Generative AI, truth, and manipulation in public discourse
• Human–AI responsibility and accountability in organizational communication
• AI, bias, and communicative fairness across cultural and global contexts
• The ethics of persuasion with synthetic media (e.g., deepfakes, voice cloning)
• Transparency, disclosure, and explainability in stakeholder communication
• Ethical risk communication using predictive or anticipatory AI systems
• AI and communicative agency: who speaks, who decides, and who is heard
• Trust, credibility, and authenticity in AI-mediated public relations
• Ethical implications of emotion AI, sentiment analysis, and behavioral nudging
• Normative and regulatory questions surrounding AI in political communication
• AI and the reconfiguration of professional norms in strategic communication industries
• Effects of AI-generated content on trust, credibility, and persuasion
• Disclosure strategies and their impact on audience perceptions
• Audience responses to synthetic media and AI-mediated communication
• Experimental and computational approaches to AI ethics in communication