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This study analyzes 308 news articles published by 19 newspapers across 19 countries to examine the actors behind deepfakes, the associated threats, and the proposed solutions. Using the Russia–Ukraine war as a case study, the authors examined how newspapers frame deepfake-related actors, threats, and solutions during the conflict. Qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyze the data, and framing theory to interpret the findings. Findings reveal that the actors responsible for creating, distributing, and supporting deepfakes include state and political entities, technology companies and developers, criminal networks, covert channels, and propaganda agents. The threats posed by deepfakes span political, ethical, legal, social, security, and economic domains. Proposed solutions to counter deepfakes fall into several categories: technical, policy-based, regulatory, institutional, and educational. This research contributes to the growing body of literature on modern warfare, AI-generated disinformation, deepfakes, and the rapidly changing digital information ecosystem in the post-truth era.

The importance of communities is central to public relations theory, which has recently received renewed scholarly attention. The COVID-19 pandemic put in sharp focus the importance of community – and the detrimental consequences for society when community life is disrupted. This study combines theorizing on communities and the care-based relationship cultivation model to investigate public relations in a non-traditional setting. We conducted 41 interviews with community health workers (CHWs) engaged with Latino communities during and after the pandemic. Our findings uncover a variety of strategies CHWs employ to sustain community relationships, culminating in the new care-based community cultivation framework. To support community involvement, CHWs communicate their competency, are part of the communities they serve, and meet people where they are. To support community nurturing, CHWs actively listen, communicate with empathy, and educate while working from the heart. They also serve as safe harbors, acknowledge their role limitations, build trust through sustained relationships, and overcome challenges while respecting culture. To support community organizing, CHWs make service connections while acknowledging system limitations and tailor official health guidance. Additionally, CHWs work to overcome obstacles to community members’ well-being. Ultimately, we echo calls for more public relations scholarship to uplift marginalized communities, especially during crises, so that our work supports community well-being and safety.

Sociolinguistic research has long documented the appropriation of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) across media including film, music and advertising. In this article, we add to this body of work by exploring the digital recontextualisation of a subset of AAVE features as ‘TikTok/internet language’. To do this, we analyse metalinguistic discourses of linguistic appropriation in a corpus of 178 TikTok videos. We identify two main competing discourses: On the one hand, a concern regarding the indexical erasure of AAVE as a variety of English spoken by Black Americans; and on the other, claims of a new register of ‘internet language’. Concluding, we argue that, in the participatory context of social media, the circulation of the label ‘TikTok language’ poses an issue for the raciolinguistic enregisterment as a ‘Black variety’ of English.