The study highlights the crucial role of professional social media and LinkedIn instruction for students seeking employment. An analysis of 20 business and technical communication textbooks identifies significant gaps between textbook guidance and real-world expectations. Some textbooks in both fields fall short in offering actionable strategies for creating and maintaining a professional social media presence. While many textbooks emphasize the importance of social media or LinkedIn, most fail to provide concrete examples or best practices, such as keyword optimization for AI, effective networking strategies, and best practices for posting content. Grounded in digital literacy theory and professional identity formation, the study provides teaching recommendations, including the identification and adoption of supplemental materials to teach professional social media usage.

This article examines how artificial intelligence is transforming instructor-student communication and student evaluation in higher education. By comparing traditional and AI-mediated communication practices, the study synthesizes current literature on opportunities, challenges, and ethical considerations. The analysis highlights the need for digital literacy, emotionally intelligent AI tools, and balanced pedagogical strategies. Practical and theoretical propositions are provided to guide educators in leveraging AI while preserving human-centered teaching values.

This article presents a conceptual framework for enhancing business writing skills through social media integration in business communication education. By embedding platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, the framework promotes essential competencies such as clarity, audience awareness, and professional tone. Five core principles—constructivist learning, digital literacy, ethical writing practices, real-time feedback, and collaborative writing—underpin this framework, emphasizing experiential learning that bridges informal and formal communication styles. This approach offers educators a structured method for developing students’ adaptability and writing proficiency, aligning pedagogical practices with the evolving needs of modern business communication.

Phatic refers to the rhetorical function of creating effective communication channels, keeping them open, and establishing ongoing and fruitful relationships, all of which are vital in the age of digital rhetoric, social media, and global intercultural exchange. In this realm, the professional communicator functions less as an originator of new information and more as a space designer, a facilitator of others’ online interactions, a curator of user-generated content, and a communication leader. The phatic function—especially relevant to online interactions such as virtual teamwork, intercultural communication, and user help forums—deserves significant attention as a primary purpose for professional communication.