Introduction to Strategic Communication

How can you get students to reduce their use of water? And how can you go about persuading hospital patients to make healthier eating choices? In this course students learn to develop, design and evaluate communication interventions in a scientifically sound manner. In small groups, you choose your own topic and write a communication plan to address a real-life problem, for example related to climate change, nature conservation, sustainability or health.

Communication and Persuasion

How are people influenced by their social environment? Can people be influenced without being aware of it? And how do persuasive principles play out in different contexts? This course focuses on persuasive communication in various contexts and in relation to present day issues in science and society. Processes underlying persuasion and influence will be studied from a communication sciences, psychological and sociological point of view. . By the end of the course, you will know how persuasion works from different perspectives and will be able to use this knowledge to understand and design persuasive appeals.

Communication and Organisations

What problems is our target group dealing with? What are competitors doing? And how can we improve our performance on social media? Organisations constantly interact to stay in tune with their environments. In this course, we take up the questions of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of external and internal communication of organisations, zooming in on key themes and challenges. In a group case study, you put theory into practice in a real life example.

Communication, Power and Politics

How can the roles of different types of actors be understood? Who gets to speak and be heard, and why? How can inclusions and exclusions be understood? What forms of communication advance inclusion? Public policy is the outcome of a political processes between these players, in which communication is of great importance. Think, for example, of lobbying, public debate, and participatory approaches in development.

This course provides a broad foundation for understanding different roles of communication in the making of public policy, and for helping to advance inclusive governance through communication. The course is structured as a role-play, with student groups taking the roles of consultants ,  exploring cases in the domains of health, environment and international development. By the end of this course, you will have thorough understanding of what public policy is, and how communication, power and politics determine who gets to govern and who doesn’t. 

Risk Communication

Is vaccination safe? Will the Corona virus take over the world? What is the flood risk in the Netherlands? In our rapidly changing knowledge society, experts and non-experts tend to have different appreciations of science and technology issues. What exactly is the nature of these differences and what are the communicative implications?

This course provides insight into theoretical and practical-strategic matters of risk communication. Special attention will be given to life science hazards such as climate change, food (production), zoonoses, and water management and life science technologies like biotechnology, genomics and nanotechnology. You will work on multi-stakeholder analysis on the topic of a particular hazard in order to analyse and understand how risk communication takes place in practice.

Science Communication 2.0: Dialogue and Transdisciplinarity

While still considered authoritative domains, science and technology have also become contested areas. Online communities argue against vaccination, nutritional advice is openly disputed, science blogs fight over climate change, and cases of scientific fraud dominate the news. How come, and what do these developments mean for the ways in which science is communicated in society?

The course focuses on master students who are interested in public communication about science and technology. Throughout the course we translate the insights to different domains of science and technology, such as nanoscience, food technology and biotechnology.

Internet-based Communication and Learning for Social Change

Can social media help us become more healthy? And how can technology help us to change our behavior? This course investigates the role of online media in the life-science domains. We use communication and learning theories to understand planned and unplanned change.

Students design a digital application that addresses a communication challenge and write an individual essay.

Facilitating Interactive Processes

Awarded Excellent Education Prize 2016

What happens if you don’t facilitate an interactive process, like a negotiation a collaboration or a public debate? Without facilitation, important groups may be forgotten, critical views unheard, ideas remain unexplored and unarticulated, consensus forced and proposed solutions may be ineffective when implemented. To deal with the complexity of rural development, social welfare and public health problems, this course aims toequip‘new’ professionals with crucial facilitation skills and knowledge. Through interactive lecturing, group work, case studies, presentations and role plays, the course enhances your capacity to translate conceptual ideas into actual intervention practice.