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RESEARCH CENTER FOR INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT PROBLEMS of NAS of Ukraine (KHARKIV, UKRAINE)

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ID R30-03156

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Liburkina L. M.

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The Historical Evolution of Advertising and PR Activities in the Context of Media, Journalism, and the Digital Business Environment
Herashchenko І. M.

Herashchenko, Іnna M. (2026) “The Historical Evolution of Advertising and PR Activities in the Context of Media, Journalism, and the Digital Business Environment.” Business Inform 9:757–757.

Section: Management and Marketing

Article is written in English
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UDC 659.1:07(091)

Abstract:
The article examines the historical evolution of advertising and public relations activities and traces their transformation in relation to the development of media systems, journalism, and the digital business environment. The relevance of the study is determined by the intensifying commercial pressure on media organizations, the rapid growth of digital and algorithmically mediated platforms, and the ongoing integration of artificial intelligence into content production, audience targeting, and media relations, developments whose historical roots remain insufficiently systematized in a single integrative framework. The aim of the study is to reconstruct the principal historical stages through which advertising and PR activities have evolved in relation to media systems and journalism, and to analyze how each stage reshaped the boundary between these fields. The study addresses three research questions concerning the identification of historical stages, the changing relationship between advertising or PR practice and journalistic norms, and the implications of this trajectory for the contemporary digital business environment. Methodologically, the study employs a qualitative, historical-analytical review and synthesis of peer-reviewed academic literature published primarily between 2021 and 2025, combined with well-documented historical evidence on the development of advertising and public relations practice, organized through a three-step analytical procedure of extraction, chronological-thematic organization, and cross-checking against reported empirical findings. As a result, six historical stages are identified and characterized: the pre-professional era of press-agentry and early print advertising, the professionalization of public relations in the early twentieth century, the broadcast era of radio and television, early digitalization from the 1990s onward, platformization and social media, and the most recent stage of platform-based, algorithmic, and AI-driven communication. The findings indicate a consistent long-term trend towards structural and practical convergence between advertising, PR, and journalism across all six stages, intensifying in the platform and algorithmic eras through native advertising, agile cross-functional newsroom-communication structures, and shared digital competency requirements. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the integration of six distinct thematic strands of existing literature into a single, coherent six-stage historical periodization. The practical value of the study lies in its contribution to the managerial and organizational understanding of the digital business environment faced by contemporary media, advertising, and PR organizations, informing decisions related to organizational design, workforce competency development, and strategic responses to the ongoing algorithmic and AI-driven transformation of the media landscape.

Keywords: advertising; public relations; historical evolution; journalism; digital business environment; media communication; digital public relations; algorithmic branding; artificial intelligence.

Bibl.: 16.

Herashchenko Іnna M. – Candidate of Sciences (Economics), Associate Professor, Associate Professor, Department of Business Journalism and Digital Media, Simon Kuznets Kharkiv National University of Economics (9a Nauky Ave., Kharkiv, 61165, Ukraine)
Email: [email protected]

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