What should have been a simple announcement to a sympathetic public turned into a spider’s web of conspiracy theories across social media. How did it all go so terribly wrong?
Britain’s Prince William and Kate, Princess of Wales, leave Buckingham Palace to meet South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol during his state visit to the U.K. in November 2023.
(Jonathan Brady/Pool Photo via AP)
Effective strategic communications about Kate Middleton’s condition would have helped the princess better protect her privacy, while building bridges of trust and transparency with the public.
Gas stoves without adequate ventilation can produce harmful concentrations of nitrogen dioxide.
Sjoerd van der Wal/Getty Images
The natural gas industry has spent years trying to undermine scientific findings about gas stoves and health. If this sounds familiar, that’s no accident.
A Ukrainian flag is displayed in front of a destroyed house in eastern Ukraine in October 2022.
Juan Barreto/AFP via Getty Images
An analysis of tweets posted by the Ukrainian national government and the Kyiv city government in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shows a national resilience.
In October, Loblaw announced a price freeze on one of its in-store brands through a letter from Loblaw Companies chair and president Galen Weston. The promotion ended on Jan. 31.
(Shutterstock)
Art historians have long used traditional X-rays, X-ray fluorescence or infrared imaging to better understand artists’ techniques.
Metropolitan Museum of Art/Wikimedia Commons
Breathless headlines of artificial intelligence discovering or restoring lost works of art ignore the fact that these machines rarely, if ever, reveal one secret or solve a single mystery.
Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame.
EPA-EFE/FLORIAN WIESER
The FDA has largely lost its ability to regulate the myriad pills, powders and potions that promise to grow muscle, shed body fat and improve your focus.
The first Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine dose in Canada sits ready for use at The Michener Institute in Toronto in mid-December 2020, less than a year from when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn
If Big Pharma wants to achieve the ultimate image makeover, it must capitalize on the current public good will about its COVID-19 vaccines by prioritizing socially responsible practices.
The shifting balance between journalism and PR is fueling a lack of trust in the news. That’s bad for everyone.
(Unsplash/Camilo Jimenez)
Public relations and journalism have always existed in an uneasy balance. Social media and low revenues are shifting that balance in favour of PR, creating a lack of trust in the news.
A mourner in Calgary places flowers at a memorial for a Cargill worker who died from COVID-19. A PR campaign that alleged workers would rather collect government assistance than work failed to mention their employment in industries hit hard by COVID-19.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Public relations is a form of manipulation, used to shift public opinion. It is expressly designed to benefit the organization wielding it, something we’d be wise to remember during the pandemic.
Pipe for the Trans Mountain pipeline is unloaded in Edson, Alta., in June 2019.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
Villain, victim or hero? It all depends on who’s telling the story. When an audience is aware of how a story is framed, it can focus on the arguments, not the frame.
Companies are having trouble keeping up with the recent rise of activism.
AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
Fred Cook, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
A PR veteran explains four key takeaways from a survey of communicators and activists taken earlier this year and what they mean for today’s anti-racism protests.
Actors Dennis Franz and Jimmy Smits on the set of ‘NYPD Blue.’
Mitchell Gerber/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
For decades, there’s been a concerted effort by law enforcement to ensure their perspectives – and not those of people being policed – dominate prime-time television.
Consumers may think Boeing’s planes are safer because the company donated 250,000 masks to China.
AP Photo/Vincent Yu
New research shows that when companies do things like give to charity or reduce their carbon footprint, consumers perceive their products as less risky.
If you’re strangled by health care costs, are you really ‘free’?
jwblinn/Shutterstock.com
In the wake of the New Deal, the business community realized that appealing to widely shared American values could get the public to oppose measures that curbed corporate power.
United Airlines officials testify after United physically forced a customer off a Chicago flight.
Reuters/Kevin Lamarque