Strategic Communication and Artificial Intelligence: Reviewing Emerging Innovations and Future Directions

Abstract

This review examines the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) as a novel technology for strategic communication. This study includes a survey of pertinent literature that highlights innovative communication linked to AI applications in public relations, marketing and branding, political communication, and customer relations with the goal of enlightening both research and practice. Emerald Insight and Google Scholar, two essential online databases, were used to retrieve and analyse information from peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters (n = 17) published between 2017 and 2022. Based on the main inquiries raised by the research, significant themes were discovered and critically explored. Political communication with AI, AI-focused public relations and marketing approach, and conversational AI assistants were the major themes in the research on strategic communication and AI integration. These studies were primarily the outcome of quantitative and mixed-method techniques used in a western environment. This review satisfies the need for research on AI and strategic communication that makes inferences applicable to the context in Ghana. The study's conclusion outlines a research agenda for the future, emphasising the need for research on particular topics like integration of AI voice assistants in relationship marketing domains, adoption of wearable technology and its relevance to customers' health consciousness as well as privacy concerns of emerging innovation. Future studies should also focus on developing more evidence-based AI suggestions for strategic communication practitioners, as well as a thorough methodological and theoretical discussion of how to further close the gap between research and practice in the African setting.