AI and emerging technologies in advertising and media
How artificial intelligence is reshaping media systems, advertising practice, creative work, and communication strategy.
Educator✦Executive✦EntrepreneurResearch and publications
What happens to trust when AI systems increasingly mediate what people see, believe, and decide?
Dr. Baker studies how generative AI, media systems, and institutional constraints affect persuasion, professional judgment, and human decision-making, especially in regulated, high-stakes environments.
A high-stakes context
Why financial services belongs in the research.
Financial services is an unusually revealing setting for communication research. Messages operate within regulatory constraints, credibility is an economic asset, and failures of attribution or judgment can materially affect people’s lives.
Dr. Baker uses this context to study broader questions about advertising, platform power, algorithmic mediation, and trust. The goal is not to make finance the entire subject. It is to use a high-stakes environment to make the communication questions more precise.
Four research specializations
A connected agenda with a clear center.
Algorithmic trust, responsible AI, and human oversight
How people judge credibility, attribution, expertise, and intent when generative systems participate in communication and decision-making.
Strategic communication and marketing in regulated industries
How organizations build relevance, credibility, and trust when communication operates within legal, ethical, and institutional constraints.
Audience decision-making, persuasion, and institutional trust
How messages, platforms, and institutions shape audience judgment, professional responsibility, reputation, and public confidence.
Current academic work
Works in development
Algorithmic trust and the advertising imperative
Baker, R. L. Algorithmic trust and the advertising imperative: A conceptual framework for generative AI, persuasion, and compliance in regulated financial-services communication.
Develops the Algorithmic Trust Model, examining source attribution, persuasion processing, and compliance posture as connected influences on audience response to AI-mediated advertising.
Generative AI and advertising intermediation
Baker, R. L. Generative artificial intelligence and the restructuring of advertising intermediation: Toward a Modeled Intermediation Framework.
Examines how generative AI may alter relationships among audiences, advertisers, platforms, and the emerging model layer.
Beyond efficiency
Baker, R. L. (2026). Beyond efficiency: Why AI adoption in financial advisory is misaligned and how trust-centered deployment changes the outcome.
Introduces a trust-centered framework for evaluating AI deployment decisions in financial-advisory organizations.
Publications and published work
Book, dissertation, and industry writing
Book
Baker, R. L. (2026). Abundance Unleashed: Redefining Wealth and Success. Manuscripts Press. ISBN 979-8-88926-888-8.
Doctoral dissertation
Baker, R. L. (2016). Behavioral Intentions of Wine Tourists in Southern New Jersey Using the Experience Economy Framework. Wilmington University. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 10107116.
Ideas + commentary
Research-informed writing for a wider conversation.
The Persuasion Shift is Dr. Baker’s home for timely essays and analysis on AI, media, money, trust, leadership, and the forces shaping what people believe and decide.
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