Dr Jens Madsen

Dr Sandra Obradovic

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Social and Public Communication. This course is not available as an outside option to students on other programmes.

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.

22 hours of lectures and 12 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.
3 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.

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

Students will complete a number of pieces of formative work to cement learning and prepare for summative assessments

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

Written test (65%).

Proposal (35%).