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Higher Ed: Marketing in the Time of COVID-19


From applications and admissions to tuition and teaching, the effects of COVID-19 have been widespread for colleges and universities.

Join our webinar on higher education marketing hosted by Public Relations professionals who are or have worked at Carnegie Mellon University, Yale University, and George Washington University.

Our co-hosts will explain why PR, marketing, and communications professionals at colleges or universities must retool their communications strategies before the start of the upcoming school year.

How to keep your online community engaged

What effective messaging can do to support recruitment

How to communicate around COVID-19 issues

Why you need to maintain internal communications

Featured speakers include: Larry Parnell, Program Director and Associate Professor of Strategic PR at George Washington University
Tom Mattia, former Chief Communications Officer at Yale

A Lesson in Crisis Communications: COVID-19 Case Study

Tip: Watch our free on-demand webinar "A Lesson in Crisis Comms: COVID-19 Case Study".

Free English On-demand webinar: How to adapt your higher education marketing strategy in response to  the Covid-19 pandemic.

Higher Ed: Marketing in the Time of COVID-19

The communications landscape is facing a defining challenge: polarization.

The 2026 USC Annenberg Global Communication Report, sponsored by Meltwater and developed by the USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations, explores how political and social division is transforming the structure, strategy, and influence of the PR profession.

While artificial intelligence, hybrid work, and evolving media ecosystems continue to disrupt the industry, PR professionals say polarization is doing the most damage, intensifying reputational risk, increasing executive scrutiny, and complicating corporate speech. 

The impact is difficult to quantify, yet impossible to ignore.

Drawing on global survey data from agency and in-house PR leaders, perspectives from the U.S. general public, and interviews with Fortune 500 Chief Communications Officers, this year’s report examines:

How polarization is increasing PR’s strategic importance inside organizations

Why executive visibility and corporate activism are being reconsidered

How trust in media is shifting across generations

What communications teams are doing to manage risk in an increasingly divided environment

Why the future of the profession remains optimistic despite societal disruption

The findings reveal a powerful paradox: while polarization is widely viewed as harmful to society, it is simultaneously elevating the role of communications leaders as strategic advisors to the C-suite.

Download the 2026 USC Annenberg Global Communication Report now to gain data-driven insights and practical guidance for leading communications in a polarized world.

Explore how polarization is reshaping public relations. Read the 2026 USC Annenberg Global Communication Report, sponsored by Meltwater.

2026 USC Annenberg Global Communication Report | Polarization & the Future of PR

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Polarization is Reshaping PR - What Comms Leaders Need to Know

AI and LLMs are reshaping how brands are discovered, discussed, and defined. Reputation can shift in minutes, misinformation can spread at scale, and AI-generated summaries may shape how customers, partners, and talent perceive your brand — often without you knowing.

Without the right approach, brands risk losing control of their narrative—to social platforms, algorithms, and AI systems.

What brand management means today: How consistency, trust, and reputation are shaped in a world of real-time information

Why brand equity matters more than ever: How strong brands gain flexibility, resilience, and long-term growth opportunities

How AI and LLMs are changing brand discoverability: Why tools like ChatGPT and AI Overviews now play a role in shaping brand perception

How consumer insights support smarter strategy: Turning conversations and sentiment into actionable intelligence

The tools modern brand leaders rely on: From unified dashboards to AI-powered insights that support faster, more confident decision-making

If you’re tasked with protecting and strengthening your brand in a rapidly evolving environment, this guide will help you understand what’s changed—and how to respond.

A practical guide to modern brand management. Tools for addressing AI, reputation risk, social listening, and LLM visibility

Brand Management in the Age of AI

2026 State of PR: 1,100+ Communicators Surveyed

Public relations is evolving faster than ever. Between generative AI, misinformation, and shrinking budgets, PR pros are being asked to do more—and prove more—with less.

Created in partnership with leading agency, We. Communications, Meltwater’s 2026 State of PR report reveals how over 1,100 global communications professionals are responding to these challenges and redefining what success looks like.

AI is officially mainstream: Over 90% PR teams have already integrated generative AI into their workflows for tasks like drafting press releases, optimizing content, and brainstorming.

Measurement is evolving: PR pros are under growing pressure to link comms outcomes to business KPIs, but over 40% are still measuring activity instead of outcomes

Budgets are tight, but expectations are higher: More than half of respondents expect little or no change in PR investment for 2026, despite increased demand for strategic impact.

Leadership buy-in is key: Communicators who can connect storytelling with data are earning their seat at the decision-making table.

Get more insights, benchmarks, and practical takeaways to strengthen your strategy and secure your seat at the leadership table.

Download the 2026 State of PR report to stay ahead of what’s next for PR. 

Thank you, we hope you find this report interesting.

Get the State of PR 2026 Report

The State of PR Report surveyed over 1,100 professionals on their views about the current state of the industry and expectations for the future.

State of PR 2026

A smarter approach to analyzing social listening.

Sentiment tells you how people feel. But it rarely tells you why, or what to do next.

In a fragmented media and social landscape, brands are drowning in unstructured data. While sentiment and emotion analysis have become standard tools, they often miss nuance, misread intent, and fail to provide the context needed for confident decision-making.

This white paper introduces attitudinal analysis, a modern approach that reveals tone, intent, and meaning behind conversations across social, media, and voice-of-customer data.

Why sentiment and emotion analysis break down in real-world text, especially with sarcasm, ambiguity, and mixed signals

The limitations of legacy emotion models (including why frameworks like Plutchik’s Wheel no longer hold up for linguistic analysis)

How attitudinal analysis captures intent, tone, and context — not just positivity or negativity

The Conversus Attitude Framework, a 15-attitude system built from hundreds of millions of real conversations

How attitudes predict behavior like churn, loyalty, advocacy, and purchasing intent more reliably than sentiment alone

Practical use cases for brand perception, crisis detection, competitive intelligence, CX, and marketing optimization

This white paper is essential reading for:

Marketing & Brand Leaders seeking deeper insight into perception and intent

PR & Communications Teams managing reputation, crises, and narratives

Insights & Research Professionals working with unstructured data

Agencies & Strategists delivering high-impact analysis to clients

CX & Customer Intelligence Teams focused on loyalty and churn prediction

Get the full white paper to explore how attitudinal intelligence transforms unstructured data into confident decisions.

Download your report on "From Sentiment to Emotion to Attitude"

This co-authored white paper from Meltwater and Converseon introduces attitudinal analysis, a modern approach that reveals tone, intent, and meaning behind conversations across social, media, and voice-of-customer data.

From Sentiment to Emotion to Attitude [Report]

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From Sentiment to Emotion to Attitude

Document-level sentiment is no longer enough, here’s what to do instead.

Traditional sentiment analysis was built for a simpler media landscape. Today, conversations are complex, multi-entity, and full of nuance. 

This co-authored white paper from Meltwater and Converseon explains why organizations must move beyond document-level sentiment to entity- and aspect-level analysis to unlock more accurate, actionable, and AI-ready insights.

Download the white paper to learn how leading brands, researchers, and communications teams are closing critical insight gaps and future-proofing their analytics.

In Getting Granular with Sentiment Analysis, you’ll discover:

Why document-level sentiment creates blind spots in modern media and social analysis

How entity-level sentiment reveals who or what sentiment is actually about

How aspect-level sentiment uncovers the specific drivers shaping perception

Real-world examples showing how mixed sentiment is misclassified, and how granular models fix it

Why granular sentiment is becoming essential for AI accuracy, explainability, and governance

How entity- and aspect-level approaches improve recall, precision, and actionability

This report is designed for professionals who rely on sentiment data to guide decisions, including:

Social listening and media intelligence teams

Market research and insights professionals

Data, analytics, and AI governance leaders

If accuracy, transparency, and actionability matter to your work, this paper is for you.

Through Meltwater’s partnership with Converseon, research-grade NLP models and attitudinal analytics are integrated directly into Meltwater’s enterprise social intelligence capabilities, enabling deeper insight without sacrificing scale.

The result is a practical, evidence-based guide to the next evolution of sentiment analysis.

Download your report on Getting Granular with Sentiment Analysis

Getting Granular with Sentiment Analysis

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2025 Global State of Social Media Report

The State of PR 2026 Report, created in partnership with leading agency, We. Communications reveals an industry at a crossroads. While PR fundamentals remain essential, AI, narrative risk, and rising expectations are reshaping how communications leaders operate and how they prove impact.

Diving into the survey input from more than 1,100 PR professionals, this on-demand webinar decodes the trends, tensions, and opportunities that matter most to communications executives right now.

During the session, we break down the findings into clear leadership takeaways, including:

The top challenges PR teams face, and why they’ve intensified

How AI is transforming PR workflows and strategic visibility

Shifts in media relations, pitching, and journalist engagement

The growing importance of social listening and narrative intelligence

The measurement gap, and what leaders must do to close it

This recorded session will leave you with data-backed insights and practical guidance to future-proof your comms function for the year ahead.

Request a Demo

 The State of PR 2026: What PR Leaders Need to Know Now

Explore the top PR and communications trends shaping 2026, based on insights from over 1,100 global PR professionals

On-Demand Webinar: 2026 State of PR

Thank you! We hope you will find this webinar insightful.

On-Demand Webinar: 2026 State of PR - AMER

State of PR 2026 Global Webinar - March 19

During the session, we break down the APAC survey data into clear leadership takeaways, including:

The top challenges APAC PR teams face, and why they’ve intensified

The State of PR 2026: What PR Leaders Need to Know Now

Explore the top APAC PR and communications trends shaping 2026, based on insights from over 1,100 global PR professionals

On-Demand Webinar: 2026 State of PR - APAC

AI is changing discovery fast. Customers are no longer just searching, they’re asking and large language models (LLM) are increasingly the place where audiences get recommendations, summaries, and “what should I do?”. For comms and marketing teams, that creates a new challenge and opportunity: how your brand appears in AI-generated answers, who gets mentioned, what gets said, and which sources shape the story. In this webinar, you’ll learn how leaders are defining visibility in an LLM-driven world and how to start measuring and improving it, without guessing.

Winning in an LLM-First World: How to build a 2026 GEO game plan for an LLM-first world, including how discovery is shifting and what marketing and communications teams should prioritize. - Allie Konchar, Omniscient

Turning AI Visibility into Action: Real-world examples from a leading brand on how teams combine AI visibility with social insights and complementary research methods to uncover whitespace opportunities, close insight gaps, and strengthen consumer trust. - Danny Gardner, Haleon

Measuring AI Visibility with Gen AI Lens: Understand how Meltwater’s Gen AI Lens can compare how brands and competitors appear in LLM-generated answers, identify visibility gaps and the sources shaping model responses. - Courtney Law, Meltwater

Watch on-demand now to explore the trends shaping 2026 and walk away with practical guidance you can apply immediately to your strategy.

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On Demand Webinar: GEO in 2026 |  How to Win in the LLM Visibility Era

In this webinar, you’ll learn how leaders are defining visibility in an LLM-driven world and how to start measuring and improving it, without guessing.

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