Date of Award

5-7-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Critical and Creative Thinking

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how strategic communication professionals plan, deliver, and measure the effectiveness of their messages. AI offers an opportunity to enhance efficiency with generative text platforms, predictive analytics, and automated social listening tools. However, it also introduces ethical risks, including misinformation, data bias, and reduced transparency. The core question guiding this project is: How can strategic communication professionals ethically and effectively integrate AI tools into their work to improve communication outcomes while maintaining integrity, accountability, and human oversight?

This project begins with the guiding idea that AI must be governed by clear ethical and technical guidelines. Strategic communication professionals can use AI responsibly by following structured, field-specific principles that balance innovation and ethical constraints. The project’s primary goal is to design a framework that addresses both the technical and moral dimensions of AI use in communication, ensuring transparency, fairness, and reliability.

While substantial research exists across AI ethics and communication, there remains a gap in translating this knowledge into actionable, profession-specific frameworks. This project will bridge that gap by producing an ethically informed toolkit for AI use in communication.

AI has a growing role in the field of strategic communication. With their vast capabilities and resources, AI tools can ideate, craft messaging, develop graphics, and analyze effectiveness. They can automate each of these processes and improve efficiency. Strategic communications specific tasks that AI can assist with include email filtering, social media management, content development, and comment sentiment analysis and tagging. Ultimately, AI can give strategic communications professionals, who are often part of a small or single unit team, time back in their days to prioritize strategy, operational tasks, and focus their human brainpower on tasks that need it, like applying critical audience nuances that can make or break a communication’s success.

The core problem at hand is balancing the use of innovative technology with ethical responsibility. One proposed solution to help strategic communications professionals to achieve that balance is a structured ethical and technical framework that supports informed decision making when it comes to the use of AI in communications. Overall takeaways from this project include:

● Artificial intelligence is reshaping strategic communication, offering meaningful benefits in efficiency, scalability, and data-driven insight. However, efficiency alone is not a sufficient measure of success. Overreliance on generative tools can compromise accuracy, authenticity, and audience trust.

● The collection, use, and management of data must be handled with care, ensuring informed consent, privacy protection, and compliance with legal standards. Failures in this area can result in significant legal and reputational consequences.

● Human oversight is a non-negotiable component of responsible AI use. Structured review processes must be in place to validate AI-generated outputs, mitigate risks, and ensure alignment with organizational values and communication goals.

● Formal frameworks are necessary to guide responsible AI adoption. Organizations should implement clear policies and accountability structures to ensure ethical use of AI tools.

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