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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Future Trends in Social Media and Public Relations

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Public relations (PR) focuses on storytelling by creating newsworthy content that will be communicated to target audiences. However, because social media has empowered individual consumers to an unprecedented level, we are no longer passive consumers of stories and some consumers have even reached influencer status where their opinions carry great authority. In the future, PR stories will shape global culture, but the Covid-19 pandemic has also alerted us to the damage caused by deliberate misinformation (e.g. the anti-vaccination movement). The digital environment — especially where PR now operates — is changing rapidly; artificial intelligence and machine learning are assisting corporations in processing vast volumes of unstructured data. Currently, trust in online communications is eroding in general, but the future of Web3 with blockchain technology may reverse this erosion by introducing new trust protocols into digital interactions. peerReviewed