Pages: 62

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 12

Professional communication has critical significance for contemporary societies. It influences how people interpret messages, make decisions, and form behavioural intentions, shaping how we think, feel, and act in everyday personal and professional settings. However, the landscape, role, and function of professional communication have undergone a seismic transformation in the digital era. This change is reshaping how we consume and engage with information, driven by technological advancements—from digital media to generative AI—and shifting audience behaviours. This ongoing disruption has upended traditional communication and engagement strategies, with evolving industry demands and expectations necessitating new competencies and a renewed focus on ethical practices to support organisations and communities. These transformations have profoundly disrupted professional communication disciplines, further encouraging the increasing convergence and hybridisation of existing professional communication industries and fields. This requires that professional communicators develop a blend of domain-specific and broader communication skills for an expanding range of employers and hybrid communication roles. Despite these complex and converging environments, certain foundational professional communication skills remain imperative, such as strategic thinking, effective relationship building, internal and external collaboration, and ethical communication practices. Nevertheless, there are vital opportunities to transform professional communication practice and approaches in the future.

Pages: 12

The digital era has witnessed unprecedented transformation within communication and media industries, fundamentally reshaping how audiences consume information and how communicators engage with stakeholders across increasingly complex platform ecosystems. This chapter discusses the dynamics of the contemporary media landscape and its profound implications for professional communication practice. First, it reviews some key media channels and the evolutionary trajectory of the media landscape from traditional mass media to today’s fragmented digital environment. Second, it provides comprehensive analysis of five key transformations generated by the digital era: platform fragmentation, which distributes audiences across diverse channels with distinct engagement patterns; increased interactivity and personalisation enabled by algorithmic data processing and user participation; media organisational transformation through workflow integration and cross-platform production strategies; credibility challenges stemming from political influence, privacy concerns, and misinformation proliferation; and AI-driven content creation that automates production while raising questions about authenticity and human creativity. The final section outlines outstanding theoretical and practical areas that professional communicators will need to address, including developing multiplatform competencies, balancing technological efficiency with human judgment, and maintaining ethical practices in an algorithmically mediated environment. These interconnected changes will require integrated strategic responses that combine technological literacy with core human elements of effective communication practice.

Pages: 8

his chapter examines digital platforms. Platforms are now central to how we go about our daily lives, shaping how we communicate in personal and professional contexts; they also increasingly mediate how we interact with government services. The chapter proceeds in three steps. First, it defines digital platforms, noting the infrastructural layers of platforms that organise technical, informational, commercial, and social relationships, sustain multisided markets, and serve as intermediaries between market and non-market environments. Second, it explores some important wider applications of the digital platform paradigm, giving particular attention to enterprise and public service platforms. And third, it considers the content creation industries that are now so vital to digital communication practitioners and professionals. Here, the chapter draws attention to the rise of new models of content creation, distribution, and monetisation that have been described as the Creator Economy and as Social Media Entertainment.

Pages: 8

Digital audiences are both more ‘active’ and ‘measurable’ than those that came before. Digital technologies allow audiences to directly engage with content producers online and allow producers to track audience activity in real time. Due to this, digital media has led to a more ‘participatory’ media industry. But it has also raised concerns that journalistic judgement and the ‘public interest’ are being sidelined in favour of ‘metrics’, and that ‘algorithms’—not creativity—are governing what gets produced and viewed online. This chapter provides an overview of these developments. It argues that while audience analytics pre-exist digital media, the latter is distinguished by its apparent ability to make audiences fully ‘knowable’ through ‘big data’ and real-time audience tracking. This chapter then describes how these capabilities have enabled new forms of audience-led news and content production, which have prioritised clicks and metrics over journalistic or creative judgment. The chapter ends by speculating on recent developments, as smaller and more invested audiences become increasingly valuable to news and content creators in an unpredictable algorithmic and platform-dominated environment.

Pages: 11

Visual communication is the oldest form of communication and is a uniquely powerful one. Before written and spoken communication, humans communicated through non-verbal means such as eye contact, gestures and facial expressions, and touch. These primordial communication forms have persisted and evolved alongside written and spoken language and frequently appear together as multimodal communication: communication across more than one mode, such as advertisements that feature written words, sounds, and still or moving images. Today, much of visual communication is mediated through physical or digital means. For example, rather than observing a war firsthand, many individuals in historically peaceful areas rely on the professional vision produced by journalists or through eyewitness accounts produced or published by bystanders to view far-off conflicts. Much of this vision comes from smartphone cameras, which are responsible for about 90 per cent of the more than 3.2 billion photographs made each day. This chapter explores the attributes that make visual communication a unique communication mode. It continues by briefly overviewing visual communication forms and affordances and concludes by discussing key visual communication practices and principles that affect how visual messages are made and seen.

Pages: 9

This chapter argues that ethics should always inform professional communication. The chapter begins by defining ethics and describing three ethical principles that should guide the work of today’s communications professionals: a multiplicity of voices; the mitigation of harm; and a commitment to factuality. The chapter then draws on those principles to analyse two case studies from different fields of professional communication. The first case study, from journalism, demonstrates how ethically fraught material can harm audiences. The second case study, from public relations, demonstrates how communication professionals can effectively manage ethical challenges so as to protect their reputations and their audience’s wellbeing. The chapter suggests that such challenges are inevitable in the contemporary digital communication environment, but they need not be damaging.

Pages: 102

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 12

Strategy and planning are at the heart of professional communication. They allow professional communicators to align their work with organisational and community priorities and use research to inform, monitor, and evaluate communication. A strategic approach to communication allows communicators to ensure that finite communication resources are used effectively and the benefit of communication is objectively assessed. This chapter explores the development of communication strategy and the role of strategy and planning in professional communication. The different methodologies for developing a communication strategy are outlined, and the key steps of a communication strategy are explored. This includes setting objectives, identifying audiences, crafting messages, and developing the major tactics and channels that will be used to engage the audience. Additionally, communication planning is addressed, which expands on the tasks, timelines, and resources required to deliver a communication strategy. Methods for the monitoring and evaluation of communication strategies are also explored to ensure that communication continues to meet organisational goals.

Pages: 15

Become familiar with the terms issue arena, issue management, and stakeholder management.

Pages: 12

Over 90 per cent of organisations experienced issues or crises impacting their operations in 2023–2024, with a significant percentage reporting medium to high operational impact. This reality underscores the era of ‘permacrisis’, characterised by constant movement and continuous disruption. In the face of global risks such as war, extreme weather, geoeconomic confrontation, mis/disinformation, and social polarisation, effective issue, risk, and crisis communication is vital for organisational resilience. This chapter introduces a threat-urgency continuum and specifies the communication tasks at each stage, from monitoring and mitigation to instructing information, empathy, and reputation repair. The chapter synthesises core theories, including Issue Management, Risk Information Seeking and Processing perspective, Situational Crisis Communication Theory, and Image Restoration strategies, into a toolkit for selecting responses based on responsibility, history, and stakeholder relationships. Two case studies, a climate-driven disaster in British Columbia and the WE Charity controversy, illustrate how preparedness and risk communication affect outcomes. Finally, the chapter examines technology’s dual role: social media’s visibility accelerates paracrises, whereas AI enhances detection and decision-support while introducing new threats such as deepfakes and algorithmic bias. The chapter concludes with guidance for building resilient, ethical communication systems from early warning through recovery.

Pages: 13

Effective client management in the communication industries is crucial for building and maintaining robust client–service provider relationships that enhance business outcomes. This chapter explores the development and maintenance of these relationships, focusing on the SERVQUAL model to examine service quality dimensions: tangibles, responsiveness, reliability, assurance, and empathy. These dimensions help identify and close service quality gaps to meet client expectations effectively. The concept of the ‘zone of tolerance’ is introduced, highlighting the acceptable range of service performance that clients expect. Understanding and managing this ‘zone’ is key to ensuring client satisfaction and retention. Additionally, key client management principles—transparency, active listening, consistency, empathy, and proactive communication—are outlined as essential strategies. By addressing gaps in service knowledge, delivery, policy, communication, and perception, this chapter provides a comprehensive guide to achieving optimal service quality and fostering long-term client relationships within the communication industries.

Pages: 12

In democratic societies, communities and stakeholders impacted by decisions should be given the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes. This can occur across a wide range of contexts, industries, and settings and involve business, government, and non-profit organisations. Professional communicators will likely be involved or work with those who design, develop, and implement stakeholder and community engagement programmes at some stage in their careers. This chapter, organised around a series of questions, draws on established academic and industry sources to introduce readers to stakeholder and community engagement. Subsequent discussion provides readers with a comprehensive first look at this discipline and practice. Importantly, this chapter draws from multiple disciplines, reflecting the varied nature of stakeholder and community engagement work. As a result, the chapter aims to provide readers with the confidence and interest to further investigate the concepts that underpin stakeholder and community engagement and to practice engagement in a way that positively contributes to democratic societies.

Pages: 13

Political communication is woven into the fabric of our everyday lives and is a primary mechanism through which power is negotiated. As an interdisciplinary field, political communication draws on a range of scholarly disciplines and can be understood from a variety of perspectives. This chapter provides an overview of what political communication is, who practises it, where and when it occurs, and why it has critical significance for contemporary societies. It discusses some of the different practices and types of political actors that are central to political communication in hybrid media environments and post-truth contexts, where both the mediatisation and professionalisation of politics have transformed its role and function. Adopting a predominantly Western, liberal democratic lens, the chapter considers political communication to be a strategic tool, requiring skills in rhetoric and persuasion to be wielded effectively. Some of the key tensions in exercising political agency, pursuing the public interest, and operating in political systems dominated by opacity, private agendas, and questionable conduct are also highlighted. Ultimately, understanding political communication is essential for understanding the power and systems that underpin and shape the public sphere, and govern how societies imagine, enact, and change their lived realities.

Pages: 12

Professional communicators need highly developed skills in building effective working relationships because they connect daily with many other professionals in the course of their work. These other professionals are both internal and external to their organisations and require considerable collaboration to achieve work outcomes in complex and converging environments. This chapter applies the concepts of ‘communication engagement’ and ‘dialogic communication’ to explore effective collaboration. It also identifies people with whom professional communicators need to build relationships and categorises them according to the purpose and function of the connection. Stakeholders, for example, are impacted by the organisation’s actions and their actions impact the organisation. Engagement with these stakeholders advances social capital and social outcomes. Goal-focused working relationships connect organisational goals to campaign and project objectives, where robust evaluation of projects is also needed. When communicators understand risks and strive to create empathy, mutual understanding, trust, honesty, and collaboration, engagement is effective. At the operational level, working relationships are individual and task-focused. The chapter finally utilises concepts such as systems theory and ‘boundary spanning’ to outline how to effectively work with others in complex systems.

Pages: 11

Working in teams is a standard expectation of the modern, professional workplace. Cultural diversity, including gender, age, and expertise differences, is also part of the modern workplace. Differences in cultural worldviews enhance the quality of team decision-making by offering the possibility for more and varying ideas about decision outcomes. However, differing worldviews and cultural expectations around the proper way to interact and share ideas create added barriers to understanding. Knowledge about communication attitudes, structures, and behaviours for group-based interactions are all part of considering both cultural similarities and differences when putting together a task-oriented work team. Communication attitudes in this context reference how each individual feels about working in teams, and about expectations for the purpose of a work group. Structures cover anything related to the organisation and the physical contexts in which the teamwork occurs. Communication behaviours include all the ways messages are both sent and received among team members, including verbal, non-verbal, and the use of silence behaviours. This chapter deploys a 9P Model to show the steps needed to develop team communication practices that maximise the possibilities for achieving success both in task outcomes and in building team longevity.

Pages: 82

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 11

This chapter explores persuasion as a fundamental aspect of human communication, shaping how we think, feel, and act in everyday life and professional settings. From casual conversations to public campaigns, persuasion plays a key role in shaping beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours. Understanding people is essential in the mission to persuade. Therefore, the chapter examines how audience factors, including cognitive biases, cultural values, and social identity, influence the interpretation of messages. The chapter defines persuasion as a deliberate communicative act built on logic, emotion, and credibility, which relates to two influential models: Aristotle’s Rhetoric—focusing on ethos, pathos, and logos—and the Theory of Planned Behaviour. These theories help explain how persuasive messages are constructed and how people form intentions and make decisions. These insights highlight the importance of tailoring communication to different groups and contexts. A deeper understanding of these dynamics enables us to design ethically sound, strategically effective messages while cultivating a critical awareness of how persuasion shapes our perceptions and choices.

Pages: 10

This chapter examines attitude—a central concept in psychology and communication that reflects how a person thinks and feels about specific issues, people, or objects. This chapter explores the concept of attitude and the formation and characteristics of attitude. Attitude is a crucial concept for campaigns aiming to influence audiences because it can lead to behavioural change. Thus, understanding how audiences’ attitudes are formed and, in turn, shape behaviours can help communicators to understand, predict, and control campaign outcomes and design effective and ethical professional communication campaigns. The chapter further discusses the relationship between exposure to persuasion messages and attitudinal change with a focus on today’s digital media consumption context to achieve persuasion outcomes for the goal of enhancing social good. The chapter ends with observations related to opportunities and challenges to changing attitudes in our present digital media era.

Pages: 12

Communication activities become most effective when they lead to some sort of ‘action’—encouraging individuals to get involved with a cause or change their behaviour. In this context, action transcends likes and shares; it includes meaningful behavioural change among target publics. By employing strategic messaging, emotional appeal, and social force, communication can transform mere awareness into tangible action. Guided by the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), this chapter discusses various motivational factors that make communication campaigns compelling and capable of encouraging (collective) action. TPB provides a framework for understanding voluntary, long-term, and complex behaviours, such as adopting a healthy lifestyle, supporting social causes, or choosing sustainable products; however, it may fall short in fully capturing the impact of emotional messaging. The chapter first examines the role of attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control in changing behaviours in some recent communication campaigns. Following this, it explores the influence of different types of emotions on behavioural intention. By integrating TPB with emotional factors, the chapter offers a comprehensive understanding of how communication can effectively motivate action, drawing on case studies from social campaigns (e.g., anti-speeding, environmental advocacy) and commercial contexts.

Pages: 11

In today’s digital landscape, professional communicators face the challenge of effectively engaging consumers amidst information overload and short attention spans. Micro-narratives, or bite-sized stories, have emerged as powerful tools to address this challenge. This chapter explores the concept of micro-narratives in various digital marketing content, focusing on how these short, impactful stories can capture and retain consumer attention. The discussion examines the theoretical underpinnings of narrative transportation—the psychological process where individuals become deeply engaged in a story—and its relevance to micro-narratives. It highlights how these brief stories can create engaging emotional connections with consumers. Central to this exploration is demonstrating how bite-sized stories can shape perceptions, evoke emotions, and drive action as effectively as traditional, longer-form advertising. Through real-world case studies from Malaysia, this chapter discusses the application of micro-narratives in short-form content marketing. It provides insights into the strategic use of these concise yet compelling stories, offering practical guidelines for leveraging them to enhance brand engagement and support marketing efforts. The chapter concludes by emphasising the adaptability and effectiveness of micro-narratives in diverse scenarios, highlighting the unique advantages of this concise format in modern marketing strategies, particularly in how they utilise local cultural contexts to resonate with audiences.

Pages: 13

As humanity understands more about how the natural world works and continues to advance scientific knowledge, science communicators face the challenge of communicating research processes and effectively conveying scientific findings and dilemmas to various publics. Like other disciplines of professional communication, understanding audiences and messaging strategies is central to effective science and environmental communication. This chapter introduces science and environmental communication as distinct but related disciplines. Science communication is crucial for conveying scientific and technological advancements to diverse audiences and the public, impacting societal views and policies. It involves articulating complex information clearly and engagingly, using written, spoken, and visual forms of communication to convey complex ideas. Environmental communication extends this by focusing on ecological issues and using scientific knowledge to inform public discourse on environmental concerns. Visual elements, such as photographs and data visualisations, significantly enhance science and environmental communication, helping audiences grasp complex ideas through memorable and/or emotional imagery. The challenge for such communication lies in maintaining accuracy while engaging effectively, balancing aesthetic appeal and clarity for understanding with scientific integrity. Careful, strategic use of visual tools can foster better public engagement and environmental advocacy, addressing complex issues like climate change more effectively.

Pages: 12

This chapter provides an overview of the core principles and strategies of effective health communication. While effective health communication must be grounded in evidence, it is equally driven by empathy, cultural sensitivity, and strategic delivery. By prioritising clarity, credibility, and relevance, health communicators can successfully engage diverse populations and empower individuals to make informed health decisions. Techniques such as audience analysis, message tailoring, and multichannel dissemination help ensure messages are not only seen but understood and acted upon. The chapter underscores the significance of distinguishing between truthfulness and truthiness, using evidence-based communication to foster trust and informed decision-making. Incorporating feedback mechanisms and empathy further strengthens the connection between communicators and their audiences, enabling communicators to overcome challenges and drive positive change. As the health landscape becomes increasingly complex, these principles remain essential to delivering meaningful communication and contributing to long-term improvements in public health outcomes.

Pages: 11

Professional journalism practice often positions itself as performing a ‘watchdog’ function in a democratic society. Journalists use their professional access to people and organisations, as well as their investigative skills, to present the news and information that holds elected officials to account. To perform this democratic function, professional journalism is framed by ideals of practice that prioritise objectivity, balance, as well as the absence of personal interest, belief, or advocacy from their reportorial ‘voice’. This means journalists are not meant to use reportage to overtly advocate for issues impacting communities. But this traditional adherence to objectivity and balance is changing in an era of online and social media news, where individual authenticity and personal transparency are shaping communication culture. This chapter traces the development of the professional norm of objectivity in journalism and how the influence of newer online and social media cultures of communication has created both opportunities and tensions for journalists’ voices in the news. While these newer styles and approaches still prioritise the role of the journalist in a functioning democracy, they are no longer the invisible—and unquestioned—expert but instead part of a much more complex media ecosystem.

Pages: 69

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 12

Focusing on the experiences of people with disability, this chapter explores contemporary tensions and challenges pertaining to access and inclusion in organisational communication. I discuss the problem of individualistic, ‘tick-box’ approaches to inclusive communication that place responsibility for access on disabled people; a phenomenon I conceptualise as ‘access labour’. In response, I propose that organisations ground their communication practices (and broader diversity, equity, and inclusion work) in a culture of ‘collective access’, in line with the Human Rights Model of Disability and the guiding principles of Universal Design. In making this recommendation, I outline some important considerations for centring cultural safety, particularly when engaging directly with lived-experience communities (as per a ‘nothing about us without us’ framework) to inform research, practice, and/or policy. Ultimately, I argue that professional communication scholars, practitioners, and policymakers collectively face an imperative to transform current understandings of disability inclusion through a lens of ‘problem-solving’ to, instead, prioritise an ethic of social justice and collective action.

Pages: 9

This chapter discusses the concept of participatory communication approaches in the context of development communication. The chapter discusses key typologies of participation to underscore the importance of a nuanced understanding of participatory communication. Specifically, it outlines Tufte and Mefalopulos’s (2009) and Pretty’s (1995) contributions to participatory communication approaches to development. These typologies are critical to development communication since they offer some fundamental conceptual perspectives to help understand that participatory communication-oriented development imperatives are essential for sustainable outcomes for beneficiary communities. Collectively, Pretty, Tufte, and Mefalopulos’s typologies highlight diverse understandings of participation, which often lead to divergent and sometimes opposing views of participation and its application in participatory approaches to communication for development and social change. This chapter draws on illustrative examples from Ghana and South Africa to showcase meaningful involvement and the diverse applications of participatory communication efforts with communities. The chapter concludes that, due to the threat of co-optation and often divergent conceptions of participation among various stakeholders, the nature, content, processes, and outcomes of participatory approaches must be critically interrogated, localised, and relevant for each community. Ultimately, participation requires facilitating power-sharing throughout all stages of a communication project, including the conception, design, implementation, and evaluation of development imperatives.

Pages: 13

This chapter outlines the pedagogical approach in a first-year course that explores how Indigenous Australian and non-Indigenous practices can be combined within the context of professional communication. The Locating Knowledges course serves as a foundation course for Professional Communication students at RMIT University in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, where its intensive format embeds students within their learning community. To inform their future roles as professional communicators, students are initially asked to locate themselves within a learning community, then understand their position among others, and finally, situate themselves within the world. Indigenous practices and methodologies are centred through class activities such as ‘Yarning Circles’, demonstrating to students how these approaches can enhance their communicative practices, both personally and professionally. The immersive activities, which take students outside the classroom during the first two weeks, illustrate how innovative communication approaches can foster new learning communities and invite both educators and students to consider their positionality. The course’s overarching learning outcomes highlight how valuing Indigenous perspectives and viewpoints can enhance professional communicators’ ability to amplify and diversify voices, making it a crucial instrument for social change.

Pages: 11

This chapter explores the transformative impact of the platform economy and automated technologies on communication practices. The platform economy operates within the broader digital economy, which encompasses economic and social systems built around digital platforms, automation, and data-driven interactions. The chapter first examines the rise of the platform economy before turning to the role of automation in shaping digital infrastructures. It then considers how these transformations impact communication practices, economic structures, and labour conditions. By discussing the platform economy in relation to media automation, the chapter provides an account of the entanglement between media technologies and the broader media economy, illustrating how these material forces converge to influence the ways media and communication industries operate, structure content, and engage audiences. Media automation as a multidimensional process of transformation is reconfiguring not only media infrastructures, systems of production and distribution, and the broader platform economy, but also our everyday experiences of media. By fostering critical engagement with these technologies, students and practitioners can better understand the interplay between communication practices and the economic contexts in which they operate and develop an informed understanding of how these dynamics affect both their work and the audiences they serve.

Pages: 14

To present working definitions of ‘creativity’ as a key consideration towards better understanding professional communications and media work.

Pages: 8

In this era of digital technology and AI, it is timely to examine the significance of creativity, not only in terms of social and economic worth, but also in relation to the value it brings to human creators and beneficiaries. Some posit that the cultural and creative industries—including professional communication—which rely on creative output in the form of text and images, may be particularly vulnerable to the impacts of AI. This chapter examines the role and value of creativity in the context of professional communication and the cultural and creative industries (CCI). It begins by defining and contextualising creativity, then explores how it is impacted by digital technology and AI before considering the creative people, processes, and careers that make up the cultural and creative industries. It concludes that while creativity relies on, and provides a living for, the creative workers who translate it into useful and valuable outputs, it should not be surrendered easily or reduced to a mere economic asset. Creativity, especially human creativity, should be prized and celebrated, and ultimately turned to the task of ensuring its future.