Papers for

public relations teams

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

System compares how news outlets report the same events differently

Same Story, Different Lens: A Multi-Agent System for Cross-Outlet News Framing Analysis

Abstract: News outlets covering the same event differ in what they emphasize and omit. \textit{Same Story, Different Lens} is an experimental research prototype for comparing these choices. It collects world and politics coverage from 17 outlets, groups reports about the same event, and produces structured analyses of sentiment, political lean, framing, loaded language, possible omissions, and model-estimated proportions of factual claims and opinion. Loaded-language entries include quotations and neutral rewordings. Three model roles (agents) handle article analysis, assessment of source support, and cross-outlet briefing generation. Analyses are stored in a JSONL archive. The evaluation compares outlet-level lean estimates with approximate, predefined reference ratings and summarizes the Critic's model-assigned grounding scores. These measures provide preliminary diagnostics. A grounding score reflects the model's assessment of support in the supplied text and does not establish factual accuracy or constitute independent verification.

Mon 26 OctArtificial Intelligence
The gist
News outlets often tell the same story in different ways, focusing on some parts and leaving out others. The authors introduce a system that collects articles about the same events from 17 sources and analyzes how each outlet frames the news. It looks for things like sentiment, political bias, language choices, and whether news is presented more as fact or opinion. The system uses multiple agents to break down the articles and then summarizes the differences. This tool helps reveal how the same event is reported differently across news sources.
Open → 2610.35208v1

BrandEval benchmarks long-term crisis communication for brands

BrandEval: A Two-Track Multi-Agent Benchmark for Risk-Sensitive LLM Crisis Communication

Abstract: Evaluating LLMs for crisis communication requires more than judging isolated responses, because public feedback and competitor actions can reshape trust over time. Existing benchmarks remain largely static and single-turn, offering limited evidence about long-horizon risk-sensitive communication. We introduce \textbf{BrandEval}, a two-track benchmark for product-crisis communication, focusing on public brand responses to product-related safety, quality, service, and trust incidents. BrandEval-Static evaluates stakeholder-aware strategic analysis, while BrandEval-Dynamic stress-tests response policies in \textbf{BrandPolis}, a controlled multi-agent sandbox with consumer feedback, competitor responses, and trust-risk trajectories. We also construct \textbf{BrandSRD}, a Chinese crisis-response dataset, and instantiate a reference Strategic Agent using \textbf{Strategic Rationale (SR)}. Across proprietary and open-source models, we find that static strategic quality is informative but incomplete: it aligns with some end-state outcomes but does not reliably predict volatility and delayed recovery; dynamic stress tests further expose tail-risk failures under manipulative or weakly grounded policies. The code and dataset will be available at https://github.com/htgan-ai/BrandEval.

Sun 18 OctArtificial Intelligence
The gist
Handling product crises well is tricky because responses can affect public trust over time and competitors may react too. The authors introduce BrandEval, a set of tools to test how well AI models handle these situations both in single replies and over long conversations with other agents involved. They created a dynamic sandbox to simulate public feedback and competitor actions to see how communication strategies perform. Their tests show that judging models only on short-term replies misses risks visible over longer interactions. BrandEval helps reveal when AI policies might fail in complex crisis scenarios.
Open → 2610.25208v1

Algorithms measure user influence through microblog repost and mentions

User Influence Analysis Based on Blogs

Abstract: Rumor and word of mouth spread at the same speed as the highway of information diffusion in the age of the internet. Social networks play quite an important role in the huge internet. Nowadays, social networks have become indispensable in our lives, especially for the government and enterprises. A social network becomes a complex information diffusion network with users working as nodes and the relationships between users working as the vehicle. In this paper, we propose three kinds of algorithms for computing user influence based on the behavior of a user's forwarding microblogs and the symbol of @ in microblogs. We evaluate the effectiveness of the algorithms by comparing the results of our work with the training data in the dataset, and in the end, it proves that our algorithms work well.

Tue 22 SeptSocial and Information Networks
The gist
Internet users share information very quickly, especially on social networks like microblogs. Measuring who has the most influence in spreading information helps governments and businesses understand communication better. The authors created three algorithms that look at how users forward posts and mention others to calculate each user’s influence. They tested their algorithms with real data and found they work well in identifying influential users.
Open → 2609.25908v1

A multi-agent method improves responses to hate speech online

A Multi-Stage Agentic Framework for Effective Counter-Narrative Generation and Refinement

Abstract: The rapid diffusion of hate speech and misinformation on social networks challenges democratic societies, since direct suppression efforts may deepen polarization, fuel public distrusts, and strengthen extremist narratives. LLM-driven counter-narratives (CNs) offer a promising way to reduce those risks, yet their effectiveness depends on rhetorical and stylistic choices that remain poorly understood. We present a multi-stage agent-based framework for generating, refining, and evaluating CNs, applied to pro-Russian hate and misinformation narratives on the war with Ukraine and adaptable to other domains. A pilot experiment with human evaluators identifies effective technique style pairings, such as repetition with emotional framing enhancing persuasiveness. Building on these insights, we introduce a multi-agent refinement process that iteratively improves CNs for persuasiveness, emotional engagement, and shareability. After human validation confirmed improvement, an automated safety analysis shows that our refined CNs match or improve on expert-written counterspeech. A simulated experiment then shows that they reduce the perceived strength of pro-Russian narratives and consistently outperform a vanilla LLM baseline, highlighting a pathway toward scalable, narrative-specific interventions against hate speech and misinformation. Code and data accompanying this work are publicly available at https://github.com/carmelkron/inlg2026-counter-narratives.

Sat 12 SeptComputation and LanguageComputers and SocietySocial and Information Networks
The gist
Hate speech and misinformation spread quickly on social media, and trying to stop them directly can make things worse. The authors show a new way to create and improve messages that respond to hateful or false claims using multiple AI agents working together. For example, they focus on pro-Russian misinformation about the war in Ukraine and find that some styles, like repeating ideas with emotional tones, make responses more effective. Their approach outperforms basic AI responses and matches expert-written replies in safety and impact. This method could help social platforms or organizations craft better counter-messages against harmful content.
Open → 2609.14178v1