2023/24 Taught Postgraduate Module Catalogue

LUBS5441M Consumer Culture and Digital PR

15 creditsClass Size: 200

Module manager: Caterina Presi
Email: C.Presi@lubs.leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2023/24

Module replaces

LUBS5444 - Social Media Marketing

This module is not approved as an Elective

Module summary

One of the fundamental goals of Digital Public Relations is to make people aware of a company brand and to encourage positive attitudes towards it. To achieve this, companies need to understand how consumer think, feel, and behave. More specifically, this means gaining a critical understanding of consumer culture theories relevant to attitude, persuasion and influence. Furthermore, given that people lives are closely intertwined with the internet and social media in particular, Digital PR aims to achieve its goals using online means. Informed by the latest academic research in consumer culture and social media as well as examples from current PR practice, students will be able to understand how business can leverage the social web to achieve PR goals. Students are also encouraged to become reflective social media users by developing their social media literacy skills to support their own online personal brand.

Objectives

This module aims to provide students with a critical understanding of central concepts of consumer culture and digital Public Relations (PR). They will also gain specific competencies to engage with social media to achieve digital PR objectives such as to obtain insight, gain exposure and influence.

Learning outcomes
At the end of the module the students will be able to:
LO1. Critically discuss the fundamental concepts of consumer culture and digital PR.
LO2. Compare and assess business PR practices and strategies in social media.
LO3. Make justified recommendations using selected concepts and theories of consumer culture and digital PR regarding how businesses can leverage the social web to obtain insight, gain exposure and influence.
LO4. Appraise own social media use to support their personal online brand.

Skills outcomes
Transferable skills:
- to critically analyse business practice
- to provide solutions to business problems
- to evaluate own and others’ practice

Syllabus

Indicative content:
• Consumer culture and social media culture.
• Consumer attitude, social listening and monitoring
• Search engine optimisation for PR
• Social media optimisation and Google analytics
• Persuasion, attitude change and the semantic web
• Online influencers
• Consumer digital identity and personal branding

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Lecture	10	2.00	20.00
Seminar	10	1.00	10.00
Private study hours			120.00
Total Contact hours			30.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			150.00

Private study

The module will require the student to attend lectures. Student will need to prepare for the seminars relevant to each week lecture, this may include reading a case study and/or doing some research. On occasion, students will also be required to do this for a short period of time before the lecture.

Significant amount of study time will be needed to revise for the assessment. It is suggested that students review the material as they go along rather than all the end of the semester.

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

There will be several opportunities to receive formative feedback in this module. Interactive activities during the lectures are designed to test students understanding and compare their views with those of the rest of the class. The seminars enable students to put the principles learned in the lecture into practice. Seminars may include practical exercises on online platforms, case studies, scenarios, discussions and debates. The answers provided to the various form of exercises will be further reviewed together so that students can gain an understanding of the best or preferred approaches to the issues. Support sessions to answer questions about the material or the assessment will be also included. Finally, formative MCQs will be provided to support independent revision and checking understanding outside class time.

Methods of assessment

Exams

Exam type	Exam duration	% of formal assessment
Standard exam (closed essays, MCQs etc)	3 hr	100.00
Total percentage (Assessment Exams)		100.00

Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 07/08/2023 16:19:00

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