Public relations lessons from the pandemic: A systematic review of the COVID-19 research in public relations published from 2020 to early 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic received considerable attention from public relations scholars and research publications after the pandemic exploded. This study provides an overview of the status of COVID-19 public relations research in terms of topics, regional focuses, organization-public relationships, public relations approaches and themes, stages of the pandemic, and theoretical and methodological frameworks. This study also investigated how public relations research has described the characteristics of the COVID-19 pandemic. We reviewed 126 articles published in peer-reviewed journals using quantitative and qualitative content analyses. We expect that this review provides new insights based on the current literature to advance public relations research in today's fast-changing society.