An Academic-Industry Collaboration
Kothari began researching AI and PR while she was still directing the URI’s Harrington School of Communication and Media. With her background in journalism, she had conducted research on how AI tools were being integrated in the newsroom. At her previous institution, she established a social media research lab in which faculty, students, and alum industry partners could collaborate. Kim supervised the student projects, and Werner (URI Class of 1993) brought his industry expertise.
“I would talk with Bret about what was happening in-house [i.e., how the PR industry was changing with AI]. Joon teaches PR classes and was also thinking about what it means, in terms of the curriculum,” Kothari says.
When the Page Center released a call for proposals — one that integrated public communications — Kothari and her fellow researchers believed it could be a fruitful opportunity to bring together academic and industry perspectives.
“Partnerships with people in industries are difficult to establish, because as academics we work in higher education,” Kothari explains. “But Bret is someone who is very much engaged with his alma mater, is interested in how the curriculum is changing, and has employed some URI graduates … So, that is how the project came about,” Kothari says. “Coming together to do a project that was going to inform [academic research], but also allow us to be engaged with PR agencies, was a meaningful collaboration.”
AI Use in Public Relations Organizations
The team’s research process encompassed two main data sources: focus groups and surveys.
For Kothari and her collaborators, focus groups helped them grasp the nuances of different kinds of PR organizations, including small, mid-size, and large agencies.
“Depending on the number of staff, the types of clients, and the resources available, there are going to be different strategies regarding the use of AI,” she explains.
The focus groups included five companies with varying sizes, locations, and types of clients and stakeholders. “We had the same set of questions, and we wanted to understand if there is an agency-level, organization-level implementation of AI-related strategy. For instance, were AI tools being used? And if they were not being used, what were some of the reasons why an agency or an organization would not be willing to invest in them, or unable to invest?” Kothari asks.
The research team also conducted a nationwide survey. “We worked with Qualtrics to survey communications professionals that included … mid-level executives [as well],” Kothari says. “That data now gives us a much broader look at what is happening at the national level.”
Research Implications
One of the group’s key findings is that PR agency leaders, although aware of emerging AI technology, have yet to implement AI systematically at their organizations.
“Agency leaders are having conversations with their clients [about AI], but their conversations with a larger in-house team are not necessarily at the same level, and tend to be more generalized,” Kothari says. “Another way to think about it is not that PR professionals are not aware of advances in AI or its uses; it’s just that operationally, it has not been standardized.”
One takeaway from this project is that, according to the data gathered, agency leaders feel that they have enough knowledge about the advances in AI to discuss these developments with clients. However, mid-level professionals may lack this knowledge or have concerns about the technology.
“At the ground level, it has not been operationalized. There is no consistency, and not every agency actually has in-house AI policies,” Kothari says. “I think this is where there is an opportunity to have conversations at the organization-level to understand concerns of the entry-level and junior employees and then identify places to integrate and scale AI in ways that would augment human expertise.”
Speaking from an industry perspective, Werner notes that “the biggest AI gap in public relations isn’t between agencies and clients. It’s inside agencies themselves. We have to bridge the gap between senior-level AI aptitude and mid- and junior-level agency employees. This is completely the opposite of what we experienced in the early days of social media. The entry-level employees knew the channels better than some of the C-suite.”
Moreover, Kothari suggests that PR leaders should begin conversations on how AI may improve work efficiency, what guidelines should be in place, and whether there is a worthwhile return on the investment.
The researchers point to “the nuance gap” to highlight the disparity between AI tools and human input. For example, large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are not entirely trustworthy as they rely on training data and information available online for output, and therefore require human verification.
“You still need a human in the loop,” Kothari says. “So, for some agencies with a small staff … they may choose not to invest in that [AI technology] …because the risk is too high and the return on investment is unclear, especially because human context and verification are needed before the content is ready for publication.”
Kothari, Kim, and Werner presented their focus group results at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in August 2025 and will present the survey results at the International Association for Business & Society conference in Providence this June. They plan to expand their research into peer-reviewed academic articles, as well as high-level content for the PR industry.
AI in the Classroom
At the Ifill School, Kothari is thinking about how AI technology can be used in the classroom to prepare students for careers in the media and related disciplines, so they are able to leverage their subject expertise and work with the tools responsibly.
“AI is an emerging and evolving technology, so it's important for higher education institutions to have conversations with industry leaders, so we are working together to prepare the next generation of communication professionals. The industry needs employees who are AI literate but also equipped with fundamental skills: interpersonal communication, creativity, emotional intelligence, ethical judgment, and problem-solving.”
In regard to his teaching at URI, Kim explains, “I often encourage my students to use AI but also highlight its limitations. For example, students in my social media class compare two brands’ use of social media platforms such as Instagram without using AI first. After completing the comparative social media analysis paper, students have an opportunity to compare their findings with an AI-generated comparative analysis. Many students find that AI-generated analysis is useful but does not tell the whole story. By incorporating AI into the classroom and understanding its limitations, students can be better informed and more responsibly use AI.”
Similar to what the team discovered in the focus groups, “having a strategy about why you would not be using something is also helpful, and I have encouraged faculty in the Ifill School to think about it the same way in the classroom as well,” Kothari says. “It’s important to have those conversations.”
