Mapping the Changing Landscape of Strategic Communication Research in Multicultural Korea: A Systematic Literature-Based Content Analysis of Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations Literature

This study maps the development of multicultural strategic communication research in Korea through a systematic literature-based content analysis of 42 Korean scholarly publications issued between 2007 and 2025.Focusing on advertising, marketing, public relations, public campaigns, and platform-mediated communication, the study examines publication trends, thematic domains, methodological approaches, media contexts, target groups, and the conceptualization of multicultural subjects.An exploratory textmining analysis of titles and abstracts is used as a supplementary procedure to compare semantic patterns with manually coded categories.The findings reveal three incomplete and coexisting shifts: from representation toward participation, from public service advertising toward platform-mediated strategic communication, and from social integration toward intercultural inclusion.Although recent studies increasingly address consumer acculturation, K-beauty, live commerce, social media, diversity, equity, and inclusion communication, and public relationships, multicultural subjects are still more often positioned as represented objects, recipients of education or support, or market targets than as communicative publics or co-creators.The study contributes to multicultural society research by proposing multicultural subject conceptualization as an analytic lens for evaluating how strategic communication scholarship frames agency, inclusion, and participation in multicultural Korea.