COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT PRO-SEMINAR

Communication 501 Course Syllabus

The Annenberg School for Communication, USC

Spring Term 2000 (14 weeks)

Seminar Tuesday, 6:45-9:45 pm, Room ASC 204
Instructor Director of Communication Management Program, William H. Dutton, Professor
Web Address http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~wdutton
E-mail wdutton@usc.edu
Office Telephone or Message (213) 740-2759
Home Fax or Message (310) 379-9250
Office Hours at USC Tuesday, 4.30-5.30 pm; Thursday 10.00-10.50 am in ASC 301B
Teaching Assistant Elizabeth Gutierrez Hoyt
E-mail and phone elgutier@usc.edu (213) 740-1260
Office Hours at USC 5-6.30 pm in ASC Room 130

This professional seminar introduces students to academic and practitioner perspectives on topics of central importance to the management of communication, ranging from entertainment to technology. The course stresses the need for students to appreciate both theory and practice in a number of disciplines, to use theory and research in support of policy and practice, and to attack problems from an interdisciplinary vantage point. Organized and coordinated this semester by the director of the Communication Management Program, this seminar features guest speakers and panels drawn primarily from Annenberg faculty, but also from practitioners across the Greater Los Angeles area.

COURSE OBJECTIVE:

Applying Theory, Research and Technique to Policy and Practice

At its best, communication management is concerned with the application of high-quality communication theory and research to policy and practice. Policy and practice are broadly defined to include the design, implementation, and use of information and communication technologies, messages, and other communication products or services.

The study of communication theory and research is valuable in and of itself if it advances an understanding of such issues as how people create, construct, or transfer meaning. However, in management fields within business, industry and government, particularly within the communication and entertainment sectors, communication theory and research fails often to pass the 'So what?' test. Of what value is this new way of thinking to shaping how we do what we do? How does a theoretical concept or idea inform debate about policy or practice?

This course aims to inculcate a positive approach to using theory and research as an approach to informing policy and practice. Sometimes theory relates to policy or practice in very straightforward ways, often because researchers develop theories and concepts for the purpose of informing practice, such as how to influence people. More often, communication managers and professionals face novel problems, situations, or events that do not come hand in hand with a basket of theories for them to apply. To the contrary, as a prospective professional, you need to have a wide repertoire of theory and research from which you can creatively draw to inform action.

A Selective Survey of the Field: Faculty, Topics, and Areas of Concentration

As one way to begin developing a repertoire of theory and research, this course provides students with an introduction to core areas of the communication management field. It shows how they are inextricably tied together in the most interesting problems confronting communication, policy, and practice at all levels -- from the local to the global. It will only touch on a wide variety of topics that are treated more intensively within particular courses. These areas include:

These broad areas are critical to students interested in any of the concentrations available within the master's program. This introduction to faculty and areas of communication management is designed to support further course selection within and outside a student's chosen concentration. But the most important reason for this introduction is for you to learn how to translate a diverse body of work in ways that will inform policy and practice. As a prospective user and beneficiary of communication theory and research, you must be able not only to ask the 'So what?' questions, but also be able to answer them.

Basic Communication Skills and Techniques for Managers and Professionals

A variety of communication technologies(equipment, technique, and know-how), from public speaking to Webcasting, are assumed to be known to most managers and professionals in the communication field. The seminar will devote some part of most classes to introducing or reviewing basic sets of skills and techniques. The skills chosen are those that are likely to be of value to all of the courses students will take at Annenberg. Students are also encouraged to take courses in social science methodologies, as well as key techniques in business and policy analysis, that are of most relevance to their chosen concentration, providing them with a competitive edge over those without such a background.

For example, managers and professionals in all fields of communication must be resourceful in exploiting all available sources of information. Students need to be well versed in current approaches to the use of the library, the Internet and Web, and various tools for searching and retrieving current and historical information. Therefore, some sessions might involve guest presentations by representatives of USC's Library, for example, providing hands-on experience in the use of the Internet and World Wide Web, and providing students with key gateways for locating information of direct relevance to their studies in this field. At one level, this skill is trivial. At the highest levels, it is an art and set of practices that the best professionals continue to develop throughout their career.

REQUIREMENTS

This seminar is a required course for all Communication Management M.A. students. It is designed to be taken as early as possible after entry into the program.

Grades will be based on ten (10) essays, each anchored in a particular week's presentation, topic, reading, or field of communication management, an oral presentation, regular contributions to seminar discussions, and an in-class final examination, weighted in the following manner:

Assignment Pts. Due
Essays 60 Week after speaker
Class participation and discussion 10 Regular
Presentation of one essay 10 Apr 18, 25
Final examination 20 May 2

1. Essays

Each student will write 10 essays. Each essay should be based on a week's presentation. It could take a presentation, or a topic, issue, or any theme or idea raised by the speaker(s), to write a brief essay that includes three parts:

1. Description: An early section should provide an overview, description or synopsis of what the speaker(s) said. (An alternative is to address that week's topic or assigned reading.) Put this in your own words. Relate this overview to related readings or literature, such as required readings, when helpful.

2. Translation: An effort to translate or link any aspect(s) of this presentation to policy or practice. Answer the 'So what?' question. You can of course ask the presenter(s) to develop this answer, but you should try also to put this in your own words and extend or apply this beyond the work that was discussed.

3. Critique: What are the strengths and weaknesses of the work presented? How does it inform debate? What is left out? Why is it (ir)relevant to what you are interested in doing in the communication field?

It such ways it should be anchored in this course, and demonstrate that a student can locate a relevant theory, body of research, or model and apply it to policy or practice.

Each essay should:

1. be 500 words (plus or minus 100), or about two pages, including notes and references;

2. be typed, double-spaced with one inch margins;

3. adhere to an accepted style, preferably Harvard, American Psychological Association (APA), or MLA guidelines. See the following for guidelines (http://www.apa.org/journals/webref.html) and (http://www.mla.org).

4. identify the title, student, style the paper is following (e.g., APA), and the total number of words. (There is no need for a cover page, given the brief length of these essays.)

Grading Criteria: Criteria of an excellent essay would include evidence that the student can:

o professionally produce a well-written paper that follows accepted guidelines of grammar and style;

o draw from and build on the readings, presentations, and discussions of this seminar, where relevant;

o locate and critically assess historical and contemporary material about communication and management;

o employ multiple sources to augment the presentation or readings, such as one or more interviews or personal observations, that go beyond the Internet or purely desk research;

o understand the nature and value of theory and research in communication and management;

o link theory and research with policy and practice in ways that it could be of value to practitioners, managers, or policy-makers.

All essays will be graded both by the instructor and teaching assistant. Students may, and are encouraged to, speak with other faculty members within the Annenberg School, about their essay, and to discuss the presentations and readings with other students. However, their essay must be their own work.

Academic Integrity

The University is committed to maintaining the highest standards of ethical conduct in all academic pursuits. Any student found responsible for plagiarism, fabrication, or cheating on examinations, papers, or other assignments, will receive a failing grade in the course and be recommended for suspension or dismissal from the program.

2. Presentations

The instructors will select one or more essays relevant to each week for presentation during the last two class sessions. Students should be prepared to present their essays, and answer questions from the instructor and other students. These presentations are meant to be brief (5 minutes), but formal -- demonstrating skills in presenting to a business or management audience. They should concisely and effectively convey the general topic and theme of the essay for an audience that does not have any special expertise in your chosen topic. Students can use computer-based presentation software for both preparing and presenting their talk, but this is not required. Each student should employ the best techniques they find available to reach their audience. The set of presentations as a whole are designed to serve as a review of the semester.

3. Discussion

Students should attend regularly, and be prepared to discuss the assigned readings for each class period, participate in panels or other class presentations, and make contributions to class discussions. Attendance will be taken from time to time.

4. Final Examination

Students will take a closed-book final examination that covers the readings assigned for this course and the material presented by guest speakers. One major objective of the final examination is to encourage students to work with readings and lectures to develop their own mental map of the communication management area, and to demonstrate an ability to relate theory and research to policy and practice.

READINGS FOR 501

Required Readings Available at USC Bookstores:

Drucker, P. F. (1999), Management Challenges for the 21st Century (New York: HarperBusiness).

Frank, R. K., and Cook, P. J. (1995), The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us (New York: Penguin Books).

Gates, B. (1999), Business @ the Speed of Thought -- Using a Digital Nervous System (New York: Warner Books).

Giddens, A. (2000), Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping our Lives (London: Routledge).

Owen, B. M. (1999), The Internet Challenge to Television (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

Further Recommended Readings:

Many other recommended readings are identified by topic. These lists are meant to assist students in finding work of relevance to the area and to speakers. They are not meant to be read each week. That said, all students are encouraged to read widely across the varied fields of communication management. Speak with faculty and students within your concentrations to obtain their recommendations for further reading.

Bell, D. (1976), The Coming Postindustrial Society (Boulder, Co: Basic Books).

Giddens, A. (1998), The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Malden, MA: Polity Press and Blackwell).

Handy, C. (1996), Beyond Certainty: The Changing Worlds of Organizations (Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press).

Lippmann, W. (1922, 1965), Public Opinion (New York: The Free Press edition).

McLuhan, M. (1964, 1994), Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press): particularly 3-21.

SCHEDULE AND OUTLINE OF TOPICS AND READINGS

Topics are ordered by the availability of speakers, but within this constraint, I have tried to group class sessions by topic and reading material. Dates are subject to change, as we need to be flexible in scheduling guest faculty and outside speakers. The basic plan of each seminar is to introduce faculty and practitioners, cover one broad topic, reserve some time for discussion during the second half of class, and address one basic skill, in the following order:

1. Introduction: The Communication Management Pro-Seminar (11 January)

Course objectives, requirements, and topics of the course. Including brief discussion of the:

Required Reading:

Course syllabus

Recommended for Further Reading:

Everett M. Rogers (1986), Communication Technology (New York: The Free Press): 68-115 on the history of communication science.

Basic Skills and Techniques

We will use the first lab to introduce one another, and make sure that everyone has a basic awareness of how to use our computer labs, and basic e-mail and word processing tools, including word counts, spell-checking, grammar-checking, and formatting, to do their work. Student will use basic word processing software in composing a 50-word biographical sketch that includes their background and career objectives. E-mail a copy to the instructor and TA by Friday, January 14.

2. Telecommunication Management: An Anatomy of Successes and Failures (18 January)

Guest Faculty: A. Michael Noll

A basic understanding of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is becoming increasingly valuable to managers and professionals in communication. Managers cannot be intimidated nor enamored with concepts of bandwidth, frequency modulation, and the idea of becoming 'digital'. What should you know about the emerging digital multimedia world of the Internet and Web as well as the world of existing analogue media of the telegraph, telephone, broadcasting and satellite communications.

Professor Noll has done research on why many telecommunication innovations, like the video phone and videotex, succeed or fail. In addition, he speaks often on the history and future of the telecommunication industry, providing a critical perspective on such mergers and acquisitions as AT&T's purchase of MediaOne and AOL's purchase of Time Warner. This visit will introduce a variety of telecommunication issues, help students understand the importance of the 'technical', and show why managers should know more about how information and communication technologies (ICTs) work.

Required Reading:

Owen, B. (1999): Part I, The Basics, pp. 1-42.

Further Recommended Reading:

Noll, A. M. (1998), 'The Digital Mystique: A Review of Digital Technology and Its Application to Television', Prometheus, 16, 145-53.

Noll, A. Michael (1997), Highway of Dreams: A Critical View Along the Information Superhighway (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates): 55-69 on technological uncertainties.

Basic Skills and Techniques

Creating an Effective Overhead and Communicating the Technical

Michael Noll has presented numerous talks to managers and professionals, often in technical areas. His talk will illustrate aspects of visual aids that seem to work well for this audience. Special attention will be focused on communicating technical issues to nontechnical audiences, and vice versa. We will also begin a discussion of how to present material for business and management audiences, generally, including the proper and improper use of such audiovisual material as overheads, slides, and video.

3. Law and Policy in Communication and Entertainment (25 January)

Guest Faculty: Cara Burns and Sharon Docter

Law and policy is another broad and complex area that facilitates and constrains management and business practices throughout the communication and entertainment industry. Cara Burns and Sharon Docter will introduce several cases or key legal issues, and argue that you -- not necessarily a law student -- can understand, research, and incorporate law and policy in your training and work in communication management.

Cara Burns is a practicing attorney and teacher, specializing in intellectual property (copyright, trademarks, new media) and entertainment law. She has worked for such clients as Motorola, Novell, Selena, and the Eagles. She has lectured in each of these areas.

Sharon Docter is the chair of the communication department at California Luthern University, where she teaches and conducts research on the communication law and new media. She received her J.D. from UCLA, and her PhD in Communication from the Annenberg School.

Reading:

Owen, B. (1999): continue reading, paying particular attention to issues of law and policy.

News about AT&T acquistion of MediaOne, and AOL's purchase of Time Warner: What are the law and policy issues arising from these and similar mergers and acquisitions in communication and entertainment?

Basic Skills and Techniques: Lexis-Nexis

Using the Communication Resource Center and Electronic Databases, including an introduction to the use of Lexis-Nexis databases. Stella Lopez, head of the Communication Resource Center at ASC, will organize this session. Students will be introduced also to basic techniques, search engines, and sites of value to finding useful information on the Internet and World Wide Web. We hope to experiment with all searching for the same piece of information.

4. Entertainment Management: Managing the Audience: The Production and Consumption of Popular Culture (1 February)

Guest Faculty: Professor Marita Sturken

Professor Sturken will illustrate how the study of culture and representation is important to managing communication for a variety of media, and provide a brief outline of courses in Annenberg and other schools related to the entertainment management concentration. We will ask how an understanding the production and consumption of culture can inform policy and practice in such fields as advertising.

Required Reading:

Frank, T. (1997), 'Hip as Official Capitalist Style' in The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

Frank and Cook (1995): Chapter 10, pages 189-209.

Recommended Further Reading:

Appadurai, A. (1996), 'Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy' in Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (University of Minnesota Press).

Sturken, M., and Cartwright, L. (forthcoming), Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (New York: Oxford University Press): Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6

Basic Skills and Techniques

Writing for an Audience in Government, Business, and Industry

Guest Speaker: Cherilyn Parsons

A major challenge facing all managers and professionals, as well as social scientists, is the difficult task of reaching important audiences with limited time and attention, but with a need to know. It is not simply a matter of using PowerPoint. Students of communication management should begin early on to cultivate the habits and values necessary to write in ways that engage a variety of audiences -- the potential users and beneficiaries of their work.

Recommended Reading:

Galbraith, J. K., 'Writing and Typing' in The Arts and ... , 285-294.

Strunk, W., Jr., and White, E. B. (1972), The Elements of Style, 2nd Edition (New York: The Macmillan Company).

5. Entertainment Management: Managing Creativity (8 February)

Guest Faculty: Professor Marty Kaplan, Associate Dean of ASC

The entertainment industry is critical to the economy of Los Angeles and the world. Many issues of management within this expanding local-global industry require an understanding of matters that are distinctly different from the business strategies in other industries, including many ethical, financial, and business issues of managing creativity, gaining better conceptions of popular culture, and responding to patterns of mass consumption.

Professor Kaplan will introduce the rationale and objectives of the entertainment management concentration, discuss courses of relevance to this concentration, and discuss one or more contemporary issues in the entertainment industry, such as the expanding business of Disney and how this reflects on the entertainment industry more generally.

Required Reading:

Frank and Cook (1995).

Mitroff, I. I., and Bennis, W. (1989), 'The Age of Unreality: The Entertainment Society', pp. 1-21 in The Unreality Industry: The Deliberate Manufacturing of Falsehood and What It Is Doing to Our Lives (New York: Oxford University Press).

Recommended Further Reading:

Adler, R. (1997), The Future of Advertising: New Approaches to the Attention Economy (Washington D.C.: Communications and Society Program, Aspen Institute): 1-44; notes, 45-48.

Auletta, K. (1997), 'What Won't You Do?', The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Superhighway (New York: Random House): 68-98.

Douglas, S. J. (1995), Inventing American Broadcasting: 1899-1922 (Baltimore: The John's Hopkins University Press), 315-322.

Vogel, H. L. (1998), Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis, 4th Edition (New York: Cambridge University Press): 3-28.

Basic Skills and Techniques

Public Speaking

Professor Marty Kaplan will stay on for a short time to lead a discussion of basic skills and techniques for being successful at public speaking. Dr Kaplan was a speech-writer for Walter Mondale and is widely recognized for his own impact as a public speaker. Do colorful slides with bullet points 'debase public speaking' (Zuckerman 1999)?

  1. Management, Business, and Communication: The Wall -- The Staples Center Controversy (15 February)

Guest Faculty: Professor Geoffrey Cowan, Dean

Dean Cowan will speak about the controversy surrounding The Los Angeles Times and its handling of a special issue of its Los Angeles Magazine devoted to the Staples Center. Issues of conflicts of interest between the business and editorial side of the newspaper are relevant to many other industries and businesses in communication. Dean Cowan will make some of these connections and lead a discussion of how such issues of business and ethics can be effectively recognized and addressed.

Required Reading:

Drucker (1999): 1-93.

Shaw, D., (1999), 'Crossing the Line', Los Angeles Times, Monday, 20 December: Special Report. You can read this online or download it from The Los Angeles Times Web site: <http://www.latimes.com> for a minimal charge.

Basic Skills and Techniques

Citing and Referencing Work on and Off-Line

We will introduce students to standard styles for referencing all sorts of bibliographic materials and documentation, including material from the Internet. In addition, inappropriate use of citations, such as plagarism, will be described and discussed.

7. Communication Theory and Communication Practice: Constructing Gender (22 February)

Guest Faculty: Professor Sarah Banet-Weiser

Professor Banet-Weiser joined the entertainment initiative at the Annenberg School, with the successful publication of her recent book on The Miss America Pageant, entitled The Most Beautiful Girl in the World (UC Press 1999). Her research focuses often on how a social and cultural context shapes communication texts, whether a print document or TV commercial, and why? She will discuss gender in particular as its definition is being shaped by the media.

Required Reading:

Frank and Cook (1995): Chapter 10, pages 189-209.

Further Recommended Reading:

Hall, S. (1997), 'The Work of Representation' in Hall, S. (ed.), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications).

Basic Skills Lab

Creating and Using a Spreadsheet

Each student will be provided with information which they will organize with a spreadsheet, such as Excel or Quatro, and use to graphically represent a key message about this data.

8. Telework: The Changing Geography of the Firm and Home (February 29)

Guest Speaker: Jack M. Nilles

New technologies and new management paradigms are changing the workplace, including what jobs are done where. The geography of the firm is being reshaped, as are the tools for working collaboratively and at a distance -- telework.

Jack Nilles is known internationally as the father of telecommuting. He has over thirty years experience in the technology field and has acted as a consultant to President Kennedy's Science Advisory Council, and the National Science Foundation. Mr. Nilles founded his own company, JALA, which consults with major corporations and governments world-wide on telecommuting projects and prospects.

Required Reading:

Drucker (1999): especially chapters 4 and 5 on information work and productivity.

Giddens (2000), begin.

Please check Nilles' recent article online.

Further Recommended Reading:

Nilles, J. M. (1998), Managing Telework: Strategies for Managing the Virtual Workforce (New York: John Wiley & Sons).

Goddard, J. and Richardson, R. (1996), 'Why Geography Will Still Matter: What Jobs Go Where?', pp. 197-214 in Dutton, W.H. (1996) (ed.), Information and Communication Technologies -- Visions and Realities (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Basic Skills and Techniques

Creating a Slide with Presentation Software

Students will be introduced to Microsoft PowerPoint and Corel WordPerfect Presentations software and asked to create a slide that conveys a key issue or theme arising from Marty Kaplan's presentation on public speaking, or their reading of the Owen's book, or this evening's presentations on The Staples Center Controversy.

Read:

Reading: Zuckerman, L. 'Words Go Right to the Brain, But Can They Stir the Heart?' New York Times, 17 April 1999.

9. Globalization and Communication: Electronic Commerce (7 March)

Guest Speaker: Professor Jonathan Aronson, Director, International Relations

Jon Aronson directs USC's School of International Relations, and has taught within the Annenberg School. He has expertise in international aspects of telecommunication trade and services, and has organized a recent forum on electronic commerce as it relates to these issues. This class will be a useful set of topics for addressing issues of globalization.

Required Reading:

Giddens (2000).

Recommended Reading:

Aronson, J. D. (1997), 'Global Networks, Electronic Trading, and the Rise of Digital Cash: Implications for Policymakers', pp. 125-51 in Hufbauer, C, and Wada, E. (1997) (eds), Unfinished Business: Telecommunications after the Uruguay Round (Washington D.C.: Institute for International Economics).

Basic Skills and Techniques

Inter-cultural Communication

Global firms and industries face numerous problems and opportunities for communicating across language and cultural communities. We will reflect on some fundamental issues in this field through our own very international experiences with inter-cultural communication.

10. Media and Society: The Traffic Report Study (21 March)

Guest Faculty: Professor Sandra Ball-Rokeach

Mass media can be used to shape public opinion, establish the political agenda, create images of groups, channel political power, and promote the consumption of goods and services. Theoretical perspectives on how the media effect the public can inform both those who produce and consume the media. Sandra Ball-Rokeach has focused much of her research on the social role of the media in everyday life. She will discuss one particular study that sought to use media theory to influence the content of traffic reports broadcast over radio in ways that would have a more positive social role. It serves as a concrete example of an effort to apply theory and research to policy and practice.

Guest Faculty: Professor Sandra Ball-Rokeach and others

Required Readings:

Ball-Rokeach, S. J., et al. (Forthcoming), 'Changing a Media Production Process: From Aggressive to Injury Sensitive Traffic Crash Stories' in Viswanath, K., and Demers, D. (eds), Mass Media, Social Control, and Social Change (Ames, Iowa: Iowa University Press): forthcoming

Further Reading:

Ball-Rokeach, S. S. (1985), 'The Origins of Individual Media System Dependency: A Sociological Perspective', Communication Research, 12, 485-510.

Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Rokeach, M., and Grube, J. W. (1984), The Great American Values Test: Influencing Behavior and Belief Through Television (New York: The Free Press).

Basic Skills and Techniques

Getting on the Web: Creating a Web Page.

Skip Eastman, Eileen Flick, or Joshua Fouts, Special Projects Manager at ASC will discuss how to get Web literate and create your own Web page. Software, markup languages, and classes will be discussed.

11. Governance, Law and Policy: Technology and Politics (28 March)

Guest Faculty: Professor Tracy Westen, President, Center for Governmental Studies

Professor Westen teaches courses at Annenberg in communication law and policy, but also directs a center that has been a leading force in campaign finance reform, for public affairs programming (The California-Satellite Public Affairs Network), and the development of new media for political campaigns and election (The Democracy Network). His center is presently focused on the 2000 election campaigns, so he might speak about the ideas that motivated his innovative electronic voter guide (Dnet), or the interplay between TV and the new media, more generally. Will the Internet bring more or less democratic communication at all levels of governance?

Required Readings:

Owen (1999): complete.

Gates (1999): particularly 357-71.

See: The Democracy Network at: http://www.dnet.org/

Further Recommended Readings:

Docter, S., and Dutton, W. H. (1999), 'The Social Shaping of the Democracy Network' in Loader, B., and Hague, B. (eds), Digital Democracy (London: Routledge): 222-43.

Dutton, W.H., Elberse, A., and Hale, M. 'Information, Democracy and the Internet,' Communications of the ACM, forthcoming.

Westen, T. (1998), 'Can Technology Save Democracy?', National Civic Review, 87 (1): 47-56.

12. Public Communication, Politics, and Governance (4 April)

Guest Practitioner(s): Robin Gee, TBA

Local as well as global media have opportunities to exploit new technology and policy to enhance public communication. Experience at global levels, such as with the Voice of America, and local levels, through government and public affairs cable systems will be used to illustrate issues and trends in this area.

Basic Skills and Techniques

Networking

Robin Gee and others will lead a discussion of how students can effectively 'network' with alumni and others throughout their career.

13. Strategic and Corporate Communication Management: Knowledge Management (11 April)

Guest Faculty: Professors Janet Fulk, Peter Monge, and Patricia Riley

New technology and management paradigms are changing the ways information is produced and distributed in organizations. What kinds of resources, networks, structures, technologies, and approaches to decision-making are critical to the effective management of information and communication in the organization of today? Professors Fulk, Riley, and Monge have been involved in various projects concerned with knowledge management. They will provide a broad overview of the concept of knowledge management as one example of an issue tied to strategic and corporate communication management.

Required Readings:

Drucker, P. (1999).

Gates, B. (1999).

Supplementary Readings:

Eisenberg, E., and Riley, P. (In Press), 'Organizational Culture' in Jablin, F., and Putnam, L. (eds), New Handbook of Organizational Communication, 2nd Edition (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications).

Monge, P., and Fulk, J. (1999), 'Communication Technology for Global Network Organizations' in DeSanctis, G., and Fulk, J. (Eds), Shaping Organizational Form (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage), 71-100.

Riley, P., Keough, C., Christiansen, T., Meilich, O. I., Pierson, J. (1998), 'Community of Colony: The Case of Online Newspapers and the Web', Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 14 (September) [http:www.ascusc.org/jcmc/keough], October.

Basic Skills and Techniques

Working Collaboratively in Teams

Collen Keough will introduce some basic skills and techiques of value to team work, which increasingly describes work in organizations and many courses at USC.

14. Marketing Communications: Communicating Health (April 18)

Guest Faculty: Professors Peter Clarke, Michael Cody, and Lynn Miller

This evening will focus on marketing communications, but also on a developing concentration within the school called 'Communicating Health'. Communicating effectively with customers, clients, and the general public is of value to those in public relations and marketing, but also to those managing public communication campaigns and working in public affairs. Social psychological research on human cognition, attitude formation, and value change can be applied to the design of media messages, ranging from commercial advertizing to public health campaigns. The use of media to promote public health is one example of major work in this area that Annenberg faculty have contributed.

Required Reading:

Drucker (1999), review chapter 2, 41-69.

Gates (1999): chapter 19: 333-356.

Further Reading:

Clarke, P., and Evans, S. (1998), Surviving Modern Medicine (Rutgers University Press): Introduction and Chapter 1.

Parrott, R. L. (1995), 'Motivation to Attend to Health Messages: Presentation of Content and Linguistic Considerations', pp. 7-23 in Maibach, E., and Parrott, R. L. (1995) (eds), Designing Health Messages (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications).

15. Managing Access: Information and Communication Technologies (25 April)

Resident Guest Faculty: Professor William Dutton

Has society been profoundly changed by the revolution in information and communication technologies? The field has had to critically assess and respond to the idea that we are living in an information society, which also has very direct and important implications for managers and those who design information products and services. Managers should focus on controlling access, not getting more information faster and further.

Required Reading:

Drucker (1999)

Gates (1999)

Recommended Further Reading:

Beniger, J. N. (1986), The Control Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).

Dutton, W. H. (1996) (ed.), Information and Communication Technologies -- Visions and Realities (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 1-16.

Dutton, W. H. (1999), Society on the Line: Information Politics in the Digital Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 3-18.

Basic Skills and Techniques

Student Presentations

Students will make brief, 5-minute presentations of one of their best reports on how communication theory and research can be connected with policy and practice.

Final Examination (7-9 pm, 2 May)

Students will take a two-hour, in-class essay examination over the required readings and class discussions. Two will be given at least one question related to each concentration, and be asked to write on four questions.