Mapping the Frontier: An Analytical Review of Emerging Research Gaps in Public Relations Scholarship

Public relations (PR) scholarship stands at an inflection point. The theoretical architecture that defined the field's maturation—Excellence Theory, the dialogic tradition, and relationship management—was constructed for an information environment that no longer exists. This analytical review synthesizes the most active research gaps in PR as they appear in the international literature through early 2026, organizing them into a coherent framework of four fault lines: technological disruption, sociopolitical role expansion, epistemological narrowing, and the persistent measurement–legitimacy problem. The review is positioned explicitly against the field's growing meta-literature of systematic reviews and bibliometric mappings, which it treats both as evidence and as an object of critique. Seven substantive gaps are examined: the automation of communication labor by generative artificial intelligence (AI); epistemological narrowing and the exclusion of the Global South; corporate social advocacy and PR's political turn; the unresolved evaluation and proof-of-value problem; practitioner precarity, gender, and wellbeing; PR's ambiguous position within the information-disorder ecosystem; and internal communication under hybrid work. For each gap, the review distinguishes descriptive deficits (understudied contexts) from theoretical deficits (inadequate constructs) and methodological deficits (design limitations). A dedicated discussion section interprets the cross-cutting pattern—namely, that the field's fragmented gaps are surface expressions of a single underlying renegotiation of foundational assumptions—and concise recommendations translate this diagnosis into an actionable agenda. The central contribution is a diagnostic map that reframes scattered critiques as a systemic transformation of the field's intellectual foundations.