Prof. Dr. Diana Ingenhoff (Université de Fribourg) and Prof. Dr. Philipp Bachmann have received the European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA) Best Paper Award for their contribution “Ayn Rand in Tech Leadership: Critical Perspectives on Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover and the Erosion of Communication and Stakeholder Principles.” 

The paper offers an innovative, critically informed perspective, demonstrating how deeply Ayn Rand’s Objectivism shapes communication and leadership practices within the tech sector, including those of Elon Musk. By interpreting Musk not as an outlier but as a paradigmatic figure within a broader ideological trend, the study explains why established principles of communication and stakeholder theory are increasingly eroded in platform capitalism. The award committee highlighted the paper’s compelling integration of critical theory, ideology analysis, and platform research, as well as its important contribution to rethinking the normative foundations of communication practice under conditions of digital power structures.