PB404      One Unit
The Social Psychology of Communication

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

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The course examines core theories towards a social psychology of communication. It covers different aspects of communication theory, including signal transfer, rhetoric, speech acts and dialogue, systems of discourse, and emergent features of reception and representation. Issues raised will refer to verbal and non-verbal, face-to-face, rumours, gossip and mass mediated, social media, as well as private and public, communal and strategic forms of communication. The course will also provide an overview of communication research in various professional areas of communication such a reputation management, trust building, science and political communication.

As well as discussing theories, the course considers methods for testing these and their application on real-world acts of communication. Implications will be explored as to the critical analysis and the effective design of communication efforts in professional fields such as business corporations, NGOs, scientific research bodies, health providers, governments and political parties, law enforcement, diplomatic and international organisations.

15 hours of seminars and 20 hours of lectures in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

1 x formative essay (800 words) and 1 x annotated bibliography (200 words) to correspond with each summative assessment. Both to be submitted in AT to receive feedback.

No one book covers the entire syllabus; students will be expected to read widely in appropriate journals, and a list of references will be provided at the start of the course.

J Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 1 + 2, Polity Press, 1997.
M Meyer (2017) What is Rhetoric?, Oxford, OUP
D McQuail, McQuail's Mass Communication theory (4th edn), Sage, 2000.
D Hook, B Franks, MW Bauer, (eds) The Social Psychology of Communication, London, Palgrave, 2011.
R Rice & C Atkin, Public Communication Campaign, Sage, 2000; E Rogers, Diffusion of Innovation, Free Press, 1995.
D Sperber & D Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition, Cambridge, 1995.
G Sammut and MW Bauer (2021) The Psychology of Social Influence – Modes and Modalities of Shifting Common Sense, Cambridge, CUP

Annotated bibliography (20%, 1000 words)

Essay (80%, 4000 words)

Annotated bibliography in AT (20%, 1000 words), Essay in WT (80%, 4000 words). Randomised sample of interviews to follow submission