Graduate Program

The Communication Science & Social Cognition area is dedicated to the study of the social cognitive aspects of human communication. Our faculty and graduate students investigate the cognitive and affective processes underlying the production, processing and effects of communication messages, specializing in quantitative social-scientific methods such as experimentation, survey research, quantitative content analysis and physiological measurement. Our research and coursework cover a wide range of topics including health and risk communication, intergroup and intercultural communication, interpersonal communication and argumentation, media processes and effects and persuasion and social influence. Our faculty are committed to creating a rigorous graduate curriculum and mentoring our students through individualized programs of study to prepare them as future leaders in their respective fields of inquiry. 

The Public Relations & Strategic Communication area is dedicated to multi-methodological approaches that examine organizations, messaging and media, and the publics and audiences affected by those organizations and messages. The pioneer of graduate study in public relations, the area includes experts in health and risk communication, crisis communication, organizational communication, activist publics, campaigns, management theory, civil society, gender and global public relations. Examples of recent faculty research include: development and evaluation of a mental health campaign for youth from underserved communities; analysis of how crisis communication can optimally prepare the public to respond to and recover from disasters; study of engagement tactics by public relations practitioners around the world; and examination of social media effects and use by activist groups. Students successfully present conference papers and publish articles in the most prestigious journals of the field. Alumni hold top academic positions, continuing the tradition of studying and teaching innovative public relations and strategic communication.

The area of Rhetoric & Political Culture is dedicated to the critical analysis of public discourse in historical and political contexts. Our faculty and graduate students produce scholarship at the intersections of criticism, history and theory. The study of rhetoric and political culture draws especially on local resources that include a wide array of historical archives, grassroots activism and political institutions based in the Washington, D.C., area. Our research and coursework cluster around the historical and theoretical study of political ideas; social movements, publics and counterpublics; and presidential, legislative, and judicial politics. We focus our critical attention on such texts as oratory, visual images, embodied protests, popular culture, news coverage, judicial decisions, monuments and memorials and public deliberation.