Abstract:

The purpose of this presentation is to introduce the rationale and process by which an innovative curriculum was designed, developed, and introduced (pending final accreditation) at the undergraduate level at a private university in Austria’s capital, Vienna.

In a world where attention increasingly becomes a commodity, so too grows the demand for those skilled in raising awareness, constructing a narrative, and using media to purposefully persuade in order to fulfill an organization’s mission. It is impossible to execute strategy without the affordances of a deep and practical understanding of communication. With daily approximates of nearly 4 billion active Internet users, over 108 billion emails sent, two billion Google searches, and over 305 million tweets, the current era of our information society is deeply nuanced by the push and pull on an individual’s attention. It is imperative to consider, especially in terms of digital discourses online, that attention itself has become a kind of currency that is bought and sold in exchange for persistent participation. Indeed, communication as a social act pervades offline as well as online interactions.

Messages crafted from inference, opinion, or those who seek purposefully to confuse, obfuscate, or inveigle, in fact permeate our increasingly mediated environment. According to a recent study conducted at Stanford University (2016) students ranging from middle school to university were unable to judge the credibility of news stories shown to them. It behooves universities to teach students how to engage thoughtfully and critically in the search for, and evaluation of, information, especially in an era of fake news and alternative facts.

The need for an undergraduate program in Strategic Communication is underscored by the realization that strategy itself implies diagnostic planning, a long-term orientation to time in order to guide a communication policy, and careful yet critical thinking to ensure that theory, research, and application merge successfully. A policy, promotion, or campaign that is based on strategic communication is one defined with an understanding of how persuasion, rhetoric, ethics, and writing for specific and also general audiences can be used tactically as part of a larger strategy. A strategic view of communication means a purposeful use of communications media to fulfill an organization’s mission (whether large corporate or political organizations or more community-based grassroots entities). Students graduating from an undergraduate program in strategic communication will possess the literacies required for successful navigation of a professional career in fields such as international affairs, corporate communication, and public relations, crisis management and promotional campaigns.

The main takeaways for audience members are:
(1) dialogue about curricular challenges at a dual-accredited university;
(2) curricular solutions and structure;
(3) the degree to which interdisciplinarity can at once be liberating and also, seemingly, constraining; and finally,
(4) how recent global changes encouraged the development of the degree program given the view of messages as tactics deployed as part of a larger mission-oriented strategy.

References:
[1] Stanford University. (2016). Evaluating information: The cornerstone of civic online reasoning. Stanford History Education Group. Available at: https://sheg.stanford.edu/upload/V3LessonPlans/Executive%20Summary%2011.21.16.pdf

Keywords:

Curriculum design, strategic communication, innovation, interdisciplinarity.