Relying on SISU's foreign language advantage and the support of the Key Laboratory of Brain-Machine Intelligence for Information Behavior, BMIB of SBM, the Institute of Digital PR and Brand Management is based on the combination of big data and artificial intelligence new technologies with public relations,. It focus on cutting-edge theoretical and applied research in media integration operation management, public opinion crisis communication, digital transformation of public relations, reputation index analysis, and other aspects, At the same time, it provides business guidance for the construction of public relations majors in Chinese universities, and provide image management consulting and public relations knowledge training services for industrial and commercial enterprises, government agencies, and social organizations. The predecessor of the institute was the Public Relations Research Institute, which edited and published 6 academic collections of Public Relations Research; and it has held 6 international academic seminars on public relations.
The director of the institute is Dr. Wu Youfu, one of the leading academic professors of public relations.Professor Wu has been teaching public relations courses at SISU since 1987. He has translated Public Relations and Practice (published in 1989), which was rated as one of the six outstanding publications of Chinese public relations in the 1980s. Professor Wu began to admit master students in public relations in enterprise management in 1998 and doctoral students in public relations in international relations in 2006, becoming one of the earliest public relations supervisors in China. Under the leadership of professor Wu, the undergraduate program of public relations of SISU was enrolled in 2006, and the master's program of public relations was enrolled in 2014. In 2011, the undergraduate major of public relations was requested and included in The Catalogue of Bachelor's Degree in General Higher Education in China (2012) by the MOE. SISU has become the only university in China that has the system of cultivating undergraduate, master and doctoral talents in public relations. In this process, a senior, middle and young academic team with high education background has been formed.
