Dr Lee Edwards, TW3.7.01.B

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Strategic Communications. This course is available on the MSc in Politics and Communication. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

In order to accommodate academic staff research leave and sabbaticals, and in order to maintain smaller seminar group sizes, this course is capped, meaning that there is a limit to the number of students who can be accepted. Whist we do our best to accommodate all requests, we cannot guarantee you a place on this course.

This course will be delivered by leading industry practitioners in order to facilitate a cross-fertilisation between professional experience, academic perspectives and public debates and research in this emerging field. The lecturers will be experts from a wide range of sectors, including the corporate sector, such as global media industries and e-commerce; the not-for-profit sector such as global NGOs, the voluntary sector, government and official regulators; and critics from the media and journalism. The course will culminate in a practical presentation from teams of students of their own campaigns, which will be judged by a panel of experts and their peers.  As an illustration, the range of speakers and topics could include: Global media industries: communicating with diverse global audiences; Promoting e-commerce; Global NGOs: fundraising and getting noticed; the role of information in military campaigning; Government communications strategy; Regulation: Accountability and controversy.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the LT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 x 1,500 word essay in the LT.

Cornelissen, J. Corporate communication: A guide to theory and practice.  Sage. 2014;

Crisis communication and terrorism: the Norway attacks on 22 July 2011. Corporate Communications. 19(1): 52063. 2014;

Herring, E & Robinson P. Report X Marks the Spot: the British Government's Deceptive Dossier on Iraw and WMD.  Political Science Quarterly, 129(4): 551-583;

Macnamara, J & Zerfass, A.  Social Media Communication in organisations: the challenges of balancing openness, strategy and management.  International Journal of Strategic Communication, 6(4): 287. 2012;

Taylor, PM. British Propaganda in the 20th Century: Selling Democracy.  Edinburgh University Press.  2007; Aronczyk, M and Powers, D.  Blowing Up the Brand.  Peter Lang. 2010;

Wiggill, M.N. Strategic communication management in the non-profit secor: a simplified model.  Journal of Public Affairs. 11(4): 226-236. 2011..

Essay (50%, 2000 words) in the ST.
Project (40%, 1000 words) and presentation (10%) in the LT.