Risk and Crisis Communication

Catalog description

The dual aim of the course is to provide students with an understanding of how risk and crisis communication is done and a knowledge base from which to critically assess such practices. This course addresses and assesses current thinking about the practice and make up of risk and crisis communication, including how risk and crisis are perceived by the public and how they are theorized by practitioners and critics. The course will critically engage with a variety of contexts - (cyber)security, social conflict, policing, environmental disasters - and examine a breadth of actors and technologies that are involved in communicating risk and crisis to the public: government officials, journalists and mass, digital and social media. Students will apply what they learn to current and past events/campaigns. Prerequisite(s): declared COM major/minor with A COM 265X, and majors must have completed a statistics/logic course (A COM 275 or A MAT 108 or A SOC 221 or R CRJ 281 or A PSY 210 or A PHI 210).