Vol 43, No 1 (2024)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is presently transforming society and industries with significant implications for the public relations and communication profession. However, scholarship on this subject in Africa is lacking. This paper addresses this gap by investigating AI in the public relations and communication management industry in Ghana. It focuses on the knowledge, adoption, and impact of AI, as well as the perceived risks and challenges associated with the application of AI. The study used the quantitative method to gather data from 275 professionals. Results revealed that professionals have a limited understanding of AI despite their knowledge of the concept. Communication professionals believe AI will impact the profession, their department, and how they work. However, they did not foresee any challenges or risks associated with applying AI (e.g. competency in using AI, motivation to use AI, and loss of jobs). The result points to the need for professionals to increase their knowledge and understanding of AI. There is also the need for public relations scholars in Ghana and Africa to begin serious discussions on this issue.

Central bank communication is a valuable source of information designed to shape the expectations of economic agents within and outside an economy. In particular, the content of Monetary Policy Committees’ press releases and statements reflect the central banks’ view of current and future macroeconomic developments, making them useful for creating high-frequency indicators as alternatives to traditional but slower-to-publish macroeconomic indicators. In this study, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered text-mining techniques were employed to create monetary policy communication-based indicators, namely the Monetary Policy Readability Index (MPRI), the Monetary Policy Sentiment Index (MPSI), and the Monetary Policy Uncertainty Index (MPUI), using press releases from the Bank of Ghana's monetary policy committee spanning January 2003 to December 2022. The findings suggest that while readability and sentiments generally declined over the sample period, uncertainty increased, indicating persistent macroeconomic imbalances and vulnerabilities in the domestic economy. The newly developed time series-based indicators demonstrate Granger causal relationships with key macroeconomic variables, affirming their relevance to the central bank, the Ministry of Finance, researchers, investors, and development partners. Notably, the indicators can serve as an early warning system for monitoring and predicting the country's macroeconomic risks, forecasting lagging indicators, assessing the effectiveness of the Bank’s monetary policy communication, and addressing monetary policy inquiries.

Organisations in Africa have integrated Artificial Intelligence’s (AI) innovations, such as data driven technologies and automation, into their operations. This is being done, among others, to enhance customer relationships, strategic communication and to deliver services. However, there are suggestions that these data-driven technologies are not transparent enough, which is contrary to what strategic communication is about. A survey in South Africa, for example, shows that only thirty nine percent of the people have heard of AI. This is despite South Africa being among the top five African countries in the 2020 Global Government Artificial Intelligence Readiness Index. Several academic papers evaluating the AI topic from different standpoints have been published in recent years. However, little academic work has been done regarding AI’s impact on strategic communication in the African continent. Although AI automation and applications seek to address most of society’s pressing problems, there are also challenges such as the technicality of AI, ethical issues, and overselling of AI. This conceptual article, analyses documents published on AI, journal articles and books content, identifies and discusses AI challenges, reviews different approaches to AI, examines AI’s impact on the strategic communication field and makes recommendations, with an intention to contribute to the AI and strategic communication disciplines. The research established that AI will continue to preoccupy academics and the public because of the increasing intermingling of smart technologies with different areas of human life.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and the continuous advancements in technology have changed how individuals live and how organisations function. The move to automation questions the need for and value of manual labour, particularly in the field of strategic communication. It has raised concerns about the future of jobs in the communication field and the role of humans in these advancements. The principles of the theory of disruptive innovation are applicable to the study. This study aims to explore the role of AI in the strategic communication industry. Semi-structured interviews with communication professionals in the South African strategic communication industry were conducted to explore their knowledge of AI and its role in the industry. Participants indicated a basic knowledge of the role of AI in the industry, agreeing that AI offers the benefits of convenience and efficiency. However, human input should remain valuable and training in AI technologies should be prioritised. This study contributes to the limited research on the role of AI in the strategic communication industry in South Africa.

This study examined the HPV vaccine landscape in Kenya and the USA with a focus on if differences exist in the perceptions of HPV knowledge, vaccine attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, and vaccine intention among students across country and gender. It also provides useful findings that can inform the design of persuasive health messages to promote the uptake of HPV vaccines among college students in Kenya and the USA. The study used surveys to recruit 1,033 participants (511 Kenyan and 522 USA students). The two-way MANOVA analysis revealed that the multivariate main effects showed no significant differences for gender, but the results revealed a significant main effect for the country. However, the interaction between gender and country of the participants was not significant. The univariate analysis revealed that the participants of the two countries had small significant differences in their subjective norms about HPV vaccination, and perceived behavioural control. The correlation analysis showed that HPV knowledge correlates with knowledge about the HPV vaccine and country, but not with gender. The results also revealed that knowledge about the HPV vaccine correlates with both gender and country. These results highlight the most salient predictors of vaccination intentions among college students that health communicators can focus on when designing and implementing HPV vaccination campaigns targeting students in Kenya and the USA.

During global pandemics such as COVID-19, authorities around the globe have the responsibility of disseminating preventive health messages as widely as possible to contain the crisis. However, often, as shown by earlier studies (see Molale, 2019; Williams, 2006), governments tend to apply top-down communication approaches and leave local citizens as passive receivers of messages they are required to put into practice. This qualitative inquiry examined how officials of Ratlou Municipality in North-West Province, South Africa, communicated COVID-19 messages to communities in the rural villages of Setlagole and Madibogo. Semi-structured interviews with four municipal officials and focus group interviews with 28 citizens were conducted. The findings suggest that active citizen participation is needed in the communication value chain so that citizens can have a meaningful role in addressing the pandemic. The study is significant in that it shows how linear communication methods are often employed by municipalities to interact with community members are futile, especially when citizens need to be persuaded to adopt new behaviour, such as during health emergencies like cholera, Ebola or COVID-19. Moreover, it adds to the growing corpus of research dedicated to advancing participatory communication as an anchor of citizen participation in South Africa’s local government and beyond.

Facebook (Meta) is one of the world’s richest corporations, with about 98% of its revenue generated from advertising. Beyond its utilitarian function of connecting billions of people, Facebook is a global advertising machine that basically functions by commodifying users’ information and monetising their behavioural data. But are users aware of this? While studies have examined youth’s awareness of risks in online engagements, there are limited studies on youth’s awareness of the commodification of their information and target advertising directed at them as a trade-off for ‘free’ access to online platforms. This study investigated if educated youth with Facebook accounts in South Africa were aware of this commodification process and that Facebook uses their information for advertising revenue. Drawing theoretically from discourses on commodification and digital capitalism, we examined youth’s media literacy awareness about Facebook’s commercial operation. We conducted a survey of 103 university students and employed online ethnography to elicit responses from a community of university students. The online ethnography generated 24 comments. Findings showed that the majority of participants were unaware of this basic critical media literacy fact about the commercial operations of Facebook. This inspired the recommendation for a broader focus on critical media literacy for youth, whose sociability and sense of citizenship are increasingly shaped by engagements on digital platforms.

This article investigates the evolving landscape of visual communication design within a Posthumanist framework, in the context of South African design. It addresses the dearth in research regarding the interconnectedness of Posthumanism and communication design practice, specifically aiming to bridge the gap between human-centric design solutions and the traditional commercial facets of visual communication. This article builds upon a review of existing literature to engage in a dialogue where the shared attributes discernible in both Posthumanism and design practice are explored. Framed by the research question —"What elements contribute to Posthumanism in
South African communication design, and how do these elements intersect?"— this study aims to uncover commonalities between Posthumanist principles and elements evident in contemporary visual communication design practice.
Furthermore, the concept of Ubuntu is scrutinised, leveraging it as a contextual lens through which to understand the integration of Posthumanism within visual communication in an African context. This study goes beyond the theoretical foundations of Posthumanism by suggesting six practical dimensions that were identified through the analysis of significant keywords appearing in the literature. These dimensions aim to enable practitioners to incorporate Posthumanism into design practice in South Africa, thereby bridging the gap between philosophical concepts and the practical aspects of the field.