Not all courses listed in the curriculum will be offered in a semester. Courses offered are subjected to availability of instructors and resources.
Core Courses
A6301 Communication, Technology & Society
This course examines communication, especially mass communication, within its social context, in combining a survey of classic studies with discussion of current issues and areas of debate. It introduces students to a broad range of issues concerning the role, effects and limitations of communication in modern society. Other issues that will be looked at include communication as a process within society, the content and effects of mass media, the media and public issues, media and information controls, the impact of new communication technologies, and communication for national development.
A6302 Communication Research and Data Analysis
This course focuses on how to apply the results of research to the evaluation and enhancement of media operations and output, communication planning, and mobilisation of communication resources at corporate and national levels. Research concepts such as sampling, validity and reliability, and types of research relevant to media industries (which include content analysis, survey and designs for campaign evaluation) will be covered. The course aims to enhance students' critical understanding of research findings, and the ability to translate reports into more effective media management and production.
A6303 Communication Ethics and Governance
The course aims to familiarise students with the broad scope of legal regulations covering various aspects of the media. The course will cover international laws, conventions and treaties, and Singapore law relating to the media. The course will also cover intellectual property law, defamation and censorship. The rest of the course will be devoted to ethics and policy, including current policy issues and the policy-making process. Students will be taught problem-solving skills for ethical issues. At the end of the course, students are expected to possess a better appreciation of the legal and ethical constraints in making management decisions.
A6321 Media Leadership and Management
The first part of the course focuses on the structure and process of media organisations. Students will look at the components of production, finance, programming, promotion and distribution, and human resources. The second part turns to issues concerning media as business, including multicultural management, fragmentation of the media, competition, and regionalisation.
General Electives
A6325 Public & Promotional Communication Issues & Strategies
This course focuses on government and corporate communications aimed at mass and specialized audiences. It examines issues relating to communication of government policies, corporate concerns and corporate image. Several communication models will be used to analyse different strategies and tactics employed in public communication. The course also explores possibilities of devising new communication paradigms using new technologies.
A6326 Advanced Campaign Design and Management
Public campaigns aimed at changing attitudes and behaviour or creating awareness are the focus of this course. It examines the different stages of designing and implementing campaigns. It also introduces students to different evaluation methodologies and to research approaches to campaign development. Case studies of government and corporate campaigns are used to analyse the theory and practice of public campaigns.
A6330 Public Opinion & Persuasion
This course focuses on psychological and social-psychological study of opinion and attitude change through media and public campaigns. The course will review experimental and survey designs for measuring and monitoring public opinion, as well as classic case studies. Students will also consider applications to elections, marketing, and development campaigns at the individual, group and societal levels.
A6339 Strategic Public Relations Management
Students will look at world views that drive various communication and public relations management strategies, audience segmentation strategies and techniques, and different models of public relations available to corporate public relations managers. The course also explores value-creative means of building and strengthening cogent relationships with various external entities.
A6348 Issues in Interactive Advertising
The goal of this course is to provide graduate students with a deeper understanding of the nature and impact of interactive advertising. This course will examine various perspectives and theories of interactive advertising, discuss a range of issues related to interactive advertising, and produce quality seminar papers on interactive advertising.
A6349 Managerial Seminar in Corporate Communication
C-Suite executives all over the world now recognise how important professional corporate communication is for the success of their corporations. More than ever before, they understand that corporate reputation building, investor relations, scenario development and crisis preparedness planning, competitive intelligence, communication research and organisational communication, among other communication disciplines are critical in a world of relentless change, with ever more complicated stakeholder structures, alliances and interests.
Just as the need for solid communication advice on an ever increasing and more serious range of issues is getting indispensable, key tasks of the corporate communication officer are under threat and taken over by others: organisational communication by the HR department, investor relations by the finance team, corporate reputation by the legal department and on top of this we find powerful chief marketing officers who believe corporate communication is part of their remit.
What is the future of the corporate communication officer? This will be the topic of a top-level roundtable discussion, organised by the students, in collaboration with a leading global PR firm, a top communication publication and NTU’s Wee Kim Wee School. This advanced seminar allows the students to study the current and future position of chief communication officers of mid- and large-size companies and helps them to understand how to successfully manage issues these professionals face. During their journey, students are guided by and engage with top-level professionals in these areas.
A6357 Emerging Communication & Information Technologies
This course examines new and emerging information and communication technologies with a special focus on computer-related technologies (including Web, App, smart devices, mobile technologies, computer games, educational simulation, speech user interfaces, social interfaces, agents, avatars, virtual reality, and social robots). Psychological, socio-cultural, and business implications of new technologies are the main concerns of the course.
In this course, students will learn to analyse the implications of future unseen technologies through diverse methodological tools and viewpoints provided in the class.
A6359 Fundamentals in Strategic Communication (Foundation course for students with no Communication/Media Degree or background)
This course seeks to introduce you to the fundamentals in integrated marketing communication including public relations, marketing and media. Often, graduate students who do not have an undergraduate degree in communication, struggle to understand concepts pitched at students with communication experience or knowledge. At times, the current knowledge students have is primarily focused on their local markets or taught in a different language with different terminologies.
A foundation course in strategic communication aims to bridge these gaps and help prepare students broadly for future strategic communication courses in the graduate program. Students will also gain a better understanding of the essential concepts, trends, campaigns, and the evolved terminology that applies today in the real world of marketing communication. By the end of this course, you should be able to understand concepts in content marketing, public relations and how research and data insights play a role in decision making; and have the confidence to design and present your first integrated marketing campaign for a product you developed.
The course is conducted over 2 weekends, so do expect some level of intensity with an accelerated learning format in a classroom environment.
A6360 Internal Communication
Effective internal communications are vital for an organisation and for the managers leading it. This course is for students moving up into managerial positions and covers strategic communication in the workplace. Topics include corporate-level identity such as internal branding, mission statements and value statements; corporate intranet sites; and corporate social responsibility programmes which involve the workforce. The aim of these forms of communication is to first guide employees to understand how they contribute to the organisation’s direction, and second to encourage employee buy-in and a sense of involvement, empowerment and greater commitment and job satisfaction. Internal communication is also an ongoing, everyday tactic to motivate staff, so the course also focuses on leadership, staff motivation and retention, critical listening skills and empathy, interpersonal communication and working with teams. This will include collaborating with and leading an international workforce, so students learn how to engage across cultures – which may be applicable both to international teams in the organisation and stakeholders outside. With a basis in both social psychology and theories of change management, the course helps students learn how to deal with transformation in the organisation and to lead in times of uncertainty.
A6361 Crisis Communication and Issues Management
The course gives an overview of the communication issues before, during and after a crisis. It aims to let participants reflect on the most effective strategies during these various phases. For the prevention of crisis, issue management is essential and participants will gain practical experience with some tools of issue management. In addition, they will reflect on the concept of transparency and how it could prevent crisis in an early stage. The course will also focus on a simulation of a crisis in an international organisation. Participants will role play the events as they unfold in the organisation and will discuss how to bring the situation to a good end. Afterwards, they reflect on their own strategies and actions. After the simulation, the course continues with the topic of “communication after a crisis”, on how relations with stakeholders can be restored when a scandal, issue or crisis has taken place. The course finishes with the writing of a crisis communication plan.
A6362 Digital Marketing Communication
This course introduces students to the process of developing and managing effective digital marketing communication. Central to the course is the idea of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) management. Topics include digital communication campaigns, managing corporate and brand image using digital methods, digital advertising management & design, media selection, film and video production principles in marketing campaigns, and digital marketing communication strategies in different contexts.
Digital communication activities represent an important part of most business activities. This course will provide students with the theoretical knowledge and techniques to improve the quality of their digital marketing communication - from identifying the audience's needs - through problem identification - through media planning and strategy to the creation of the most effective marketing communication messages in the form of promotion campaign, digital and social advertising.
A6363 Communication Issues and Society
The course will examine the impact that communication processes, relationships, and messages have in society. Topics of focus include community networks, community health campaigns, political communication, communication in civil society organisations among others.
A6364 Content Creation and Development
In a world where nearly a million minutes of video are shared every second we recognise the need for professionals to produce creative, engaging and effective digital campaigns and content in order to stand out in a crowded digital landscape.
This course will equip students with the hands-on skills and conceptual knowledge to plan and produce engaging digital content.
A6365 Public Affairs Communication
Public affairs is now one of the fastest growing areas of communication management. In a world where government actions can disrupt or create new opportunities for business overnight, anticipating and influencing changes in the public policy environment is critical to continued business success.
A6366 Overseas Study in Asia
The course aims to enrich participants’ knowledge on the media and communication landscape in Asia through company visits and seminars conducted by industry experts.
Participants will study particular segments of business/industry and/or corporate/government entities to gain insights and learn relevant best practices.
A6367 Digital Media Governance
This is a course on governing current, emerging and future technology: rules about rules, rules about the rulers and the ruled, and the shifting geopolitics of national, regional, and international digital realms. It aims to equip students with the knowledge of how international and national laws and policies regarding the Internet and digital media are made.
The course will cover the governance of critical Internet resources, privacy, content regulation issues including moderation, the challenges of digital challenges, and emergent technologies. It will discuss surveillance, artificial intelligence as well as the tension in 5G technology.
A6368 Digital Marketing Transformation
This course shares the key aspects in driving digital marketing transformation – from internal organisation discovery, stakeholder managements, designing customer experience, digital marketing touch points audit and putting together the right marketing technology stack.
In this course, students will learn the strategic process of digital transformation project, designing customer experience across the various marketing touch points, creating a single customer view, analysing digital touchpoints analytics, curating metrics that matters, designing experiments to optimise business growth and building the agile culture internally.
A6369 Communicating Corporate Narratives with Transmedia
This course seeks to develop the use of transmedia platforms and literacies in communicating corporate narratives. Transmedia storytelling is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies. Narrativizing and storytelling is an increasingly popular field of Business Storytelling.
Cross-listed Courses from Other Programmes
CI6221 Information Visualisation
This course will examine the study of concepts, models and examples for improved information visualisation. Students will look at representation and interpretation data, as well as different forms of document visualisation such as TileBars, galaxies, themescapes, and Kohonen maps.
K6308 Business Intelligence
Business intelligence in the corporate environment: application, systems and processes. Characteristics of competitor, competitive and social intelligence. Business intelligence and growth opportunities: political, economic and social environments. Business intelligence strategies and systems. Business intelligence in various contexts: product, customer and supplier. Internet and Web-based intelligence. Ethical issues related to business intelligence.
K6312 Information Mining & Analysis
Principles and concepts of knowledge discovery and data mining. The knowledge discovery process. Data preparation. Techniques and methods for extracting information and knowledge from large amounts of data. Statistical methods. Machine learning techniques: decision tree induction, nearest neighbour categorisation, Bayesian learning, neural networks, association rules, and clustering. Text and Web mining for unstructured data. Data mining for KM applications.
K6316 Organisational Leadership
Introduction to leadership. Challenges for leadership in knowledge management. Leadership research. Charismatic and transformational leadership. Leadership traits and styles. Personal leadership profile. Power, politics and influence. Leadership communication. Leading teams. Followership. Managing organisational processes and innovation. Managing KM initiatives. Leadership and strategy. Leading change.
A9101 New Media and Society
This course addresses selected traditional and “frontier” issues confronting communication theorists in the context of converging new media environments. Core thematic issues will reflect contemporary efforts to understand how new media/communication technologies, society, and people interact with one another and what difference this makes for communication theory and research. As a period of massive transformation affecting change in the very definition of “new media”, for course purposes, “new media” encompass Internet and/or technology-based forms including mobile phones, computer games, blogs, and social networking websites. Although all perspectives are encouraged, the primary focus will be on behavioral and social psychological approaches to new media and communication technologies.
A9108 Media Influence and Persuasion
This course provides an introduction to classic and influential theories and research on media influence and persuasion. The readings and class meetings will be guided by the major theoretical approaches to understanding how and why media messages have intended and unintended effects on individuals and society across a variety of contexts (e.g., media violence, health, political, entertainment media, news media, etc.). Within the context of these theories, students will review empirical applications of the theories and develop skills in operationalizing theoretical concepts for empirical testing.
Specific objectives of the course include classic media effects theories such as Social Cognitive Theory, Cultivation Theory, Agenda-Setting, Elaboration Likelihood Model and Social Judgement Theory. It will also cover key concepts in persuasion research such as Attention, Selection, Perception, Priming, Desensitization, Framing, Emotions and Resistance.
A9109 Advertising Theory & Consumer Psychology
This course introduces students to the essential theories and research on media influence and persuasion and equip students with skills needed to test those theories in empirical studies.
After reviewing the philosophical and structural foundations for theory construction with specific models and topics, with focus on the concepts, theoretical issues, theoretical soundness, and methodological choices made by the authors of the articles used in class, each student is expected to develop a research paper/proposal by the end of the semester.
The paper/proposal should consist of a literature review, hypotheses and/or research questions, and methods. The goal is for each student to have the experience of writing a critical review of the literature and develop a new model/theory of their own.
