The MSc Strategic Communication offers a cross-disciplinary education with a distinctive focus on:
- How corporate leaders, governments, public institutions, NGOs and even celebrities make use of narrative and argument to build consensus and dialogue with stakeholders and to (re)construct their reputation and trustworthiness, especially in crisis situations.
- The role of digital media, particularly social media and AI, in enhancing strategic communication and informing strategic planning.
- The contexts and practices of strategic communication (e.g. financial communication and investor relations; political campaigns; crisis management; branding, policy change, takeover and mergers): how they are shaped through discourse strategies and how discourse strategies affect them.
The programme combines a range of conceptual knowledge and practical skills which are crucial for successfully and critically engaging in a variety of strategic communication activities, such as defining and effectively sharing the mission, vision and values of an organisation, responding to a crisis, launching new products and services or supporting strategic initiatives like mergers, event promotions, and campaigns for political elections, health prevention or policy change.
You will learn how to define communication issues and objectives in line with organisational goals; to analyse contexts, situations and audiences; to design spoken and written communication that are at the same time sound, persuasive and compliant with legal and ethical requirements; to exploit the potential offered by established communication technologies and new digital media to effectively engage stakeholders.
Practical projects include a variety of activities like designing and delivering effective public speeches, building digital media campaigns and writing of digital communications for live briefs.
The programme creates many opportunities of interaction with communication experts and leaders enabling you to familiarise yourself with relevant professional contexts and learn more about current challenges in strategic communication practices. Through the final project, you will have the opportunity to develop an empirical or theoretical dissertation or to develop a research project in collaboration with an organisation.
You'll able to pursue your own specific research/study interest in strategic communication via a 12,000-15,000 word dissertation and by choosing three further modules from a range of other M-level modules provided by the department or wider school.
Why Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool?
Active Research Community
The Department of Communication and Media employs around 35 permanent staff who work on a wide range of interdisciplinary research on topics including: digital and social media; political communication and journalism; media history and theory; film, television and other screen entertainment media; strategic communication; cultural studies and cultural anthropology; photography; computer games; television and magazines; global entertainment, and global events. We have particularly strong specialisms in the areas of social media, screen studies, media and everyday life, and gender and sexuality, notably LGBTQ+ inclusivity across television, film, magazines and online media. Another key specialism is multimodal and critical discourse analysis, making use of large datasets and new computational and machine learning techniques to analyse communication patterns across digital platforms.
Our six master's courses draw on the expertise of our staff research groups and research centres: the Culture, Space and Memory research group and the Centre for Culture and Everyday Life (CCEL) house cultural/anthropological research around memory and material cultures, photography, everyday life, media arts, mega-events and the spatial humanities, and partners with cultural organisations such as museums and galleries; the Discourse, Data and Society research group and the Language, Data and Society (LANDS) Research Centre bring together ground-breaking work in multimodal studies, artificial intelligence and data analytics with expertise in critical discourse studies, language and argumentation; the Media, Politics and Society research group and the Centre for Digital Politics, Media and Democracy (DigiPol) respond to urgent political challenges around the spread of misinformation and ‘fake news’, online harms, digital news audiences, democratic deliberation, human rights and climate change; and the Screen and Film Studies research group and the Centre for Converged Screen Media and Entertainment (COSME) boast an unusually comprehensive approach to film and screen that includes industrial and institutional aspects, stardom and performance, and encompasses Hollywood, American independent cinema, documentary, cult television, animation and virtual reality. There are also shared themes such as populism and politics, gender and sexuality, cultural labour, digital cultures and social inequalities, in addition to the Digital Media & Society Institute (DMSI) which brings together multidisciplinary teams of researchers to explore the role and impact of digital media in society today.
These research groups, research centres and the research institute provide the foundations for our vibrant and exciting research-connected master's programmes aimed at understanding contemporary issues in communication and media studies today. We host regular research seminars in which postgraduate students are encouraged to participate.
Liverpool
What better place to immerse yourself in the subject than Liverpool, a city with a reputation as a political and creative force, with a thriving production sector and a unique cultural heritage? The Department has close links to cultural industries and venues in the city, some of which collaborate with us in offering assessed work placements as part of our programme of study.