There is no getting around the fact that we live in a media society nowadays. Niklas Luhman once pointed out, that almost everything we know about the world, we know from mass media. Today, the media landscape is highly fragmented and spans from rather traditional (newspapers, radio) to ‘new’, social media (Instagram, tiktok, multimedia platforms etc.). Understanding the modes of action and functioning of the modern media world is indispensable for a successful career in business communication.

This seminar focuses on

•           the role of the media in our society,
•           concepts of the public sphere,
•           organizations as drivers of public discourses,
•           public interest and issue life cycles,
•           communicator roles (from journalists to PR and Marketing professionals),
•           and ethical challenges that arise as a result of the complex relationship between organizational communication (PR) and (news) journalism (‘media relations’).

Today, there are more than six communications professionals for every journalist. Strategic and corporate communication in particular not only determines journalism, but it also rather heavily outguns journalism. With the media and journalism in a deep crisis, the economic pressure on news production has also an enormous impact on corporate media relations. Where businesses used to rely on so called earned media primarily, paid and owned media have risen in importance in the past decades. While journalists are still the main gatekeepers to the public sphere, they are under economic pressure while exercising their societal function.

In this course we open up a conversational space to critically reflect on the relationship between journalism and business communication against the background of the media reality in the third decade of the 21st century.

The learning outcomes will be as follows:

• The students will learn about the key role that media relations play for organizations of all size and scope by learning about the current media environment, tensions and ethical conflicts and the potential issue management.
• The students will explore a wide range of communicator roles, from journalist to professional business communicators, from text producers to influencers. They will learn about their individual functions and doing, structural dependencies and ‘love-hate’ relationships. They will gain the ability to empathize with different players in the media system and learn to "put themselves in their shoes". This is an invaluable skill for every management position.
• The students will analyse the challenges of ‘sparking conversations’, issue management and ‘media relations’ through case studies on a local level. With the ‘field research’, the students will get a thorough understanding of the ethical challenges that arise in the field of business communication in a highly mediatized environment. The students will also develop potential solutions and enact them during a classroom presentation.

Attendance is mandatory. Students can miss one session without good cause.

In the introductory phase, the class will inquire into the theoretical underpinnings of ethical challenges in business communication and media. Hence, participants will learn about the relationship between organizational communication and journalism, and ethical challenges that arise thereof.

The students will work on identifying various communicator roles and learn more about the professional roles on the organizational and the media side through in-class discussions and interactions. For the first individual assignment, the students will conduct interviews with a journalist and a strategic communicator exploring the role and the relationship, including tensions, conflicts and ethical issues; a summary of the findings will be submitted. The main project will be a case study of a local conflict around social acceptance / engagement / participation (examples will be discussed in class in advance). In groups, the case study will be explored and presented (in creative ways) in one of the final course sessions. The learnings from the individual interviews can be included in the group project.

Assessment will comprise the following elements:

• Participation (in course & online; 10%)
• Conduct 2 interviews (individual assignment); brief summary, list of conflictual topics and ethical challenges (40%)
• Case study report based on in-class presentation (group assignment) (presentation: 30%; supporting materials/report: 20%)

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