Courses
COMM7250 Strategic Public Relations and Crisis Management (3 units)
This course will not only examine communication in crises but show what we can do to prevent or minimize the impacts of such crises. Important concepts of strategic management of public relations, issues management, risk communication, activism, crisis communication principles and crisis communication in both traditional and new media will be covered. Local and overseas cases will be incorporated to teach students how to deal with crises in real situations. Different methods and approaches for resolving different types of crisis will be discussed, showing how for example prevention and resolution of a natural crisis and a confrontational crisis should be different, with the former emphasising in the region’s infrastructure and the latter highlighting the human context of a conflict. As a result, students will not only study and analyse the communication tools for a crisis but discuss an organization’s management. This subject is a multiple-disciplinary course that helps students integrate the knowledge from communication, sociology, psychology and management in dealing crises with complicated contexts.