The New Media Landscape for Government Communicators

The media landscape your community relies on for information is not the one that existed five years ago. Local newspapers have contracted or disappeared. New channels — neighborhood apps, Facebook groups, local influencers, online forums — have filled some of the gap and created new dynamics that most government communications strategies haven't caught up with.

This course is about understanding the information environment your community actually lives in, and building a communications strategy that works within it. Not the theoretical media landscape — the real one, mapped from evidence.

Six modules covering the full strategic picture: from understanding how information flows through your specific community, to traditional media's new role, to the informal channels that shape perception in ways official communications rarely reach.