Public relations practitioners’ management of fake news: Exploring key elements and acts of information authentication

•Fake news is conceptualized as an important organizational issue that requires monitoring and management by PR practitioners.•Participants identified manipulative intentions and misleading content intended to harm reputation as key elements of fake news.•PR practitioners rely on both traditional news media and crowdsourcing to verify information.•Practitioners emphasize the need to maintain control as the official source of information, avoiding sociopolitical controversies in official responses, as well as adhering to the PR professional standards and ethics as the key to differentiate original contents from fake news. Using a thematic analysis of open-ended questions answered by current public relations practitioners in the United States, this study examined how public relations (PR) practitioners currently understand fake news and the strategies they use to verify information. Fake news is conceptualized as an important organizational issue that requires monitoring and management by PR practitioners. Participants identified manipulative intentions and misleading content intended to harm reputation as key elements of fake news. The current findings suggest that PR practitioners rely on both traditional news media and crowdsourcing to verify information. Finally, to differentiate clients’ content from fake news, participants emphasized the need to maintain control as the official source of information, avoid any controversies in official responses, and adhere to PR professional standards and ethics.