Reference no: EM133686493
Assignment: Political Communication
Overview: This course examines communication and global advocacy organizations with particular reference to two types of organizations, NGOs that advocate for human rights, and terrorist organizations. We begin by examining the concepts of human rights and terrorism. Next, we examine how global organizations concerned with human rights, both governmental and non-governmental, have developed, how they operate, and how they interact with governments and other organizations and, then explore the development and changes in terrorist organizations. We then explore how organizational strategies and developments concerning human rights and terrorism have interacted with communication technologies, political opportunities, and events to create networks of human rights and terrorist organizations. In the final part of the course, we will consider the management of these organizations and their continuing struggles to recruit, fund and sustain their activities.
Throughout we are interested in five key questions:
A. What are the most effective actors and institutions for communicating new ideas, new attitudes, and new behaviors
B. What factors determine an actor's receptivity to new ideas, new attitudes, and new behaviors, do strategies and tactics vary across audiences, and do strategies and tactics change by actors?
C. What factors determine the capacity of an organization to promote its goals?
D. What are the most effective messages to promote new ideas, new attitudes, and new behaviors, and how do these messages change as norms change?
E. How do NGOs and Terrorist Organizations retain their credibility (with their supporters and prospective supporters) and how effective are they in using the resources they raise and command?