Current Topics in PR & Marketing

The course familiarizes students with the contemporary perspectives and the progress in the field of advertising and public relation, serving as a valuable complement to the basic advertising and public relation course(s). More specifically, even if the course will endorse a business administration focus, given the interdisciplinary features of the field and the very recent research directions towards a more socio-cultural approach, the course will mainly focus on consumers/audience and socio-cultural and political application/implication. Students are thus offered opportunities to further examine topics such as modern marketing communication and visual design, consumer culture research, public relation and public diplomacy, both through individual and group assignments, and in this manner widen the basic understanding of the advertising and public relation discipline.

Intended Learning Outcomes

The overall aim of the course is to introduce students to recent research topics and insights into advertising and public relation, by both theoretically and empirically reflecting and analysing current commercial and non-commercial events. Upon completion of the course, students should be able to: 

1. Account for new recent topics and insight into advertising and public relation.
2. Illustrate the extent the recent topics and insights affect common mainstream understanding of advertising, marketing and public relation Skills and abilities.
3. Discuss, both orally and in written form, themes and topic introduced in the course.
4. Ability to perform analyses, with the help theoretical concept and empirical cases, of current topics into advertising, marketing and public relation Judgement and approach.
5. Critically evaluate advertising and public relation role into the contemporary consumer society.
6. Reflect upon the historical socio-cultural and political environment upon which contemporary advertising and public relation is grounded upon

Education

The course consists of a combination of lectures, seminars and group work and requires a significant portion of self-study on the part of students. Assessment for the course will be continuous and is carried throughout the different activities of the course. The course workload is 80 hours equivalent to 3 ECTS (40 hours per week equivalent to 1,5 ECTS). The language of instruction is English. Please note that all teaching and learning activities - such as lectures, seminars, assignments and assessment tasks – are carried out in English.