PRK 3662 Insight-driven communication
PRK 3662 Insight-driven communication
Deriving insights is an increasingly important success factor in todays communication environment. Measuring, analyzing, and implementing data into decision-making processes create effective and efficient PR and marketing campaigns. With societal issues increasingly occupying managements agenda, communication departments are increasingly tasked to gather and develop insights into complex problems. And on the agency side, value is increasingly created through creative and strategic planning, which itself is dependent on create insights.
In this course, the general objective is to provide students studying PR and marketing communication with these insight- and data-driven methods/analytics instrumental to understanding audiences, to become skilled in developing persuasive and customized messaging, to select the best communication channels for messages, and ultimately, to achieve optimal results. The emphasis of the class will be on application and interpretation of the results from the prior location and collection of data and on analyzing information for making real life business and communication strategy decisions. We will focus less on the mathematical and statistical properties of the techniques used to produce these results, and more on the methods used in analysis of the data itself.
- Students will obtain an understanding of the role of data in todays marketing and communication environment, and will get acquainted with up-to-date methodology to plan and to frame research questions, both for practical as well as for academic endeavors.
- Participants will learn new approaches of gathering data and to extract insights from these data, ranging from perception studies to techniques of gathering insights from new online media such as facebook, twitter or google.
Students will get to know effective ways to derive and present findings from data, ranging from visualization to insight-driven argumentation. In detail, students will learn to:
- conduct perception studies and identify key influencers
- use google, twitter, facebook and other social media analytics tools
- using data to define stakeholder personas
- aggregate and visualize insights
- Strong emphasis will be laid on methodological concerns and a fundamental understanding of the nature of data.
1. Introduction: Why Insights
The lecture will introduce the importance of insights for communication strategies, and will showcase advances in small and big data generation and exploitation. Students will obtain insights into the applicability of such approaches for data-driven campaigns and will develop an understanding for the nature, opportunities and challenges of data.
2. Opinion Research and the Importance of Influencers
Students will learn about processes of opinion formation, and the importance of influencers in online forms (such as influencer marketing) of communication.
3. Using Big Data for Business Challenges
These lectures will provide students with an in-depth introduction to the concept of big data, and ways of making the most of information and mining techniques that technology has enabled. These lessons will specifically look at the potential for such data for strategic insights as well as the design, implementation and measuring of data mining efforts.
4. Tools to generate insights
In these sessions, students will work hands-on with various new media to learn ways to explore trending topics, discover what stakeholders are talking about, analyze fan pages, examine friendships and gain an understanding for web site traffic and interconnectedness. Both standard as well as data-mining approaches to gather insight on these sites will be discussed.
5. Presenting Insights
In these final sessions, participants will learn about presenting their insights to a wider audience, and will discuss the challenge of finding a fit between audience needs and proper data presentation. Both structuration principles for arguments, as well as data presentation tools, including reports, dashboards, visualizations, and key metrics will be explained.
The course aims at combining formal lectures with a case teaching approach. In addition, experts involved in advertising planning and corporate communications will present their insights. The course will consist of the following elements:
- Formal lectures that aim to provide basic knowledge of the topics and a conceptual framework;
- Case studies to expand knowledge and understanding of the management process, and become capable of applying theoretical knowledge to real-world situations.
- Tutorials on using different software solutions for analyzing and visualizing insights
- Guest lectures by media and communication experts in order to gain insights into their roles/activities and experiences.
This is a course with continuous assessment (several exam components) and one final exam code. Each exam component is graded by using points on a scale from 0-100. The components will be weighted together according to the information in the course description in order to calculate the final letter grade for the examination code (course). Students who fail to participate in one/some/all exam elements will get a lower grade or may fail the course. You will find detailed information about the point system and the cut off points with reference to the letter grades when the course starts.
At re-sit all exam components must, as a main rule, be retaken during next scheduled course.
Software tools:
The course will use Tableau and gephi software.
Enkelte/alle forelesninger kan bli forelest på engelsk (Insight-driven communication).
(Ved forelesning på engelsk vil eksamen vil bli gitt både på norsk og engelsk, og studentene kan velge om de ønsker å besvare på norsk eller engelsk.)
Higher Education Entrance Qualification.
Students are expected to have taken classes in statistics and have working knowledge of MS Excel and JMP/SPSS. We expect students to have a solid grasp of the English language as well as a strong interest in the issues at hand, and to actively participate in class.
| Assessments |
|---|
Exam category: Submission Form of assessment: Written submission Weight: 40 Grouping: Group/Individual (1 - 3) Duration: 1 Semester(s) Comment: Reflection paper based on the data students gathered for the poster presentation. In no more than 15 pages, students have to explain how they approached their data collection, what decisions they had to take, and the applicability of their data to a communication problem. Exam code: PRK 36621 Grading scale: Point scale leading to ECTS letter grade Resit: All components must, as a main rule, be retaken during next scheduled course |
Exam category: Activity Form of assessment: Presentation Weight: 60 Grouping: Group/Individual (1 - 3) Duration: 20 Minute(s) Comment: Poster presentation based on primary data. Students will gather primary data on the topic, relying on one of the approaches outlined in class. Students are expected to create a poster presentation based on this data, and to explain their findings and their applicability to a communications problem, (no longer than 20 minutes). Basis for evaluation is solely the quality of their findings and visualisations, not the presentation or language skills. Exam code: PRK 36621 Grading scale: Point scale leading to ECTS letter grade Resit: All components must, as a main rule, be retaken during next scheduled course |
| Activity | Duration | Comment |
|---|---|---|
Teaching | 39 Hour(s) | |
Prepare for teaching | 60 Hour(s) | |
Student's own work with learning resources | 45 Hour(s) | |
Submission(s) | 56 Hour(s) |
A course of 1 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of 26-30 hours. Therefore a course of 7,5 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of at least 200 hours.