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Global Strategic Communication: media in emerging markets

Persone

Zhang Z.

Docente titolare del corso

Descrizione

Course Objectives

The course provides students with a basic understanding of strategic communication in today’s complex communication landscape. Considering the increasing foreign direct investment from and to emerging markets as well as the number of young professionals moving to developing countries in search of future opportunities, it is crucial to offer students a basic knowledge of communication patterns in the emerging media markets at an early age of highereducation. By taking the top four Big Emerging Markets (BEM), namely Brazil, Russia, India, and China, this course is designed to help students grow both abilities and curiosities to understand other cultures that are influencing, reviving, and changing the balance of world economic and geopolitical power. It also provides students a close look at up-to-date case studies in order to guide them to understand how to balance global consideration with local execution and to adapt existing communication strategies (and design new solutions) to the changing media environment with a strategic mindset and global outlook.

Course Description

The course is composed of three main parts:

  1. Theoretical introduction into basic theoretical concepts and terms in strategic communication, intercultural communication, and political economy of communication.
  2. The empirical part of the lectures discusses particular cases from China, India, Russia, and Brazil (include cases from the domestic media world as well as national media projects into international media market).
  3. Developing individual student papers with relevant topics and discussion with relevant scientific literature.

Learning Methods

The theoretical part of the course is composed by the ex-cathedra lectures, based on the academic readings. The empirical part of the lectures combines ex-cathedra teaching and hands-on approach: teachers introduce the specific socio-cultural elements of particular emerging markets so students, being guided by specific concepts and examples from the relevant scientific literature, would be able to analyze during the lecture particular cases of media companies. Once the students have selected, in agreement with the teachers (each student paper will be assigned to one responsible teacher in this case), a topic for their individual work, the course will extend further on how to structure their individual research papers in connection to the field of studies (include building framework from scientific literature, identifying research questions & methods & data sources, etc.). The teachers will provide constant support for students with personalized feedback during the entire process of their work. Individual student papers will be presented during the last lesson of the course and discussed together in the class.

Examination Information

The evaluation is based on the individual research paper (60%), the final presentation of the paper (20%) and the in-class participation (20%). The required length of the final individual paper is 3000-4000 words. Students are encouraged to follow a critical analysis of a specific case study within (but not limited to) the four emerging markets introduced in the class.

Required Material

  • Hall, E. (1976) Beyond Culture, New York: Anchor Press.
  • Hallahan, K., Holtzhausen, D., van Ruler, B., Veri, D., & Sriramesh, K. (2007). Defining strategic communication. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 1 (1), 3-35.
  • Hugill, P. J. (1999). Global communications since 1844: Geopolitics and technology. Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Hungtington, S.P. (1993) The clash of civilization, Foreign Affairs
  • Malamud, A., 2011. A Leader without Followers? The Growing Divergence Between the Regional and Global Performance of Brazilian Foreign Policy, Latin American Politics and Society 53(3), pp. 1-24.
  • Moghaddam, F. & Harré, R. (2010) Words, conflicts and political processes. In F. Moghaddam and R. Harré (eds) Words of Conflict, Words of War: How the language we use in political processes sparks fighting. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
  • Peters, B. (2016). How not to network a nation: the uneasy history of the Soviet Internet. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press.
  • Thussu, D. (2013) Communicating India’s Soft Power: Buddha to Bollywood. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Yurchak, A. (2005). Everything was forever, until it was no more: the last Soviet generation. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press.
  • Winseck, D., & Jin, D. Y. (Eds.). (2011). The Political Economies of Media: the transformation of the global media industries. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
  • Zhao, Y. (2011) Understanding China’s Media System in a World Historical Context. In Hallin, D. & Mancini, P. (Eds). Comparing Media Systems beyond the Western World. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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