The European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA), a body of academic institutions, researchers and senior professionals in the field of strategic communication with more than 500 members from 51 countries has awarded two master students for their excellent theses in strategic communication.

The Master Thesis Award for Excellence is an annual prize aimed to celebrate the PR academia and the role performed by European Higher Education Institutions in the evolution of knowledge of this field. The jury, headed by Martina Topić, from the University of Alabama, selected the winning theses in two categories:

The success of social movements is highly dependent on their sustainability, and in
their efforts to produce meaningful change, they inevitably encounter oppressive
dominant forces. The winning dissertation is entitled ‘Flexible Organizational
Structures of the Digitally Mediated Collective Actor – A Case of the Shame
Movement in Georgia’ an analyses the stages of transformation a collective actor
undergoes, from a reactionary crowd-enabled network to a more traditional social
movement and emphasises the role of strategic communicative processes and
digital technologies in the constitution of its organisational structures.

Autonomous systems, machine learning and artificial intelligence are increasingly
integrated into our everyday lives at an accelerating pace. The winning dissertation
is entitled ‘Strategic Communication of Trustworthiness in Autonomous Systems,
Machine Learning & AI’ and analyses how an organisation can effectively and
strategically communicate an autonomous system’s trustworthiness before and
during a system crisis, failure or rupture and develop a framework for how strategic
communication can foster trust in the technology and support a successful
organisation-public relationship.