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Microsoft

This course will provide you with the essential skills to handle media relations effectively and manage crises with confidence.

In this course, you will:

• Identify the core principles, frameworks, and strategies for effective crisis communication, describing different types of crises and their corresponding communication approaches.

• Formulate media engagement strategies specifically for crisis situations by aligning media and internal messages with the needs of stakeholders.

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This course will provide you with the essential skills to handle media relations effectively and manage crises with confidence.

In this course, you will:

• Identify the core principles, frameworks, and strategies for effective crisis communication, describing different types of crises and their corresponding communication approaches.

• Formulate media engagement strategies specifically for crisis situations by aligning media and internal messages with the needs of stakeholders.

• Develop a plan to cultivate and maintain positive relationships with media professionals and leverage those relationships for brand building.

• Identify how to use AI tools to augment and improve crisis communication processes.

• Develop a crisis communication plan that integrates media relations strategies and AI capabilities.

By the end of this course, you will have a robust understanding of how to manage media relations and handle crises efficiently, utilizing modern AI tools to enhance your strategies.

Enroll now

Traffic lights

Read about what's good
what should give you pause
and possible dealbreakers
Teaches skills and knowledge for building relationships with stakeholders in the media
Helps develop media engagement strategies for crisis situations
Includes how to leverage modern AI tools to enhance crisis communication processes
Provides frameworks and strategies for effective crisis communication
Suitable for individuals seeking to develop their media relations and crisis management skills
Taught by Microsoft, a renowned tech company with expertise in media relations

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Reviews summary

Strategic media relations & crisis response

According to learners, this course offers a highly practical and strategically relevant approach to media relations and crisis management. Students particularly appreciate the clear frameworks and actionable insights provided, which are directly applicable to professional scenarios. A standout feature is the inclusion of modern AI tools for enhancing communication processes, seen as both timely and valuable. While it provides a strong foundational understanding, some advanced professionals might seek deeper dives into specific, complex case studies. Overall, it's considered an excellent resource for developing essential communication skills in today's dynamic media landscape.
Offers broad coverage, potentially less depth for advanced practitioners.
"This course is excellent for gaining a solid foundation, though seasoned pros might desire more advanced scenarios."
"I found it provided a comprehensive overview, but some niche topics could use deeper exploration."
"While generally thorough, I hoped for more granular detail on specific crisis communication software."
Emphasizes cultivating positive relationships with media professionals.
"The insights on building and leveraging media relationships were truly insightful."
"I now have a better understanding of how to proactively engage with journalists."
"The advice on maintaining a positive brand image through media engagement was excellent."
Content is well-organized and easy to follow for learners.
"The course flow was logical, making complex topics digestible and easy to grasp."
"I appreciated the methodical approach, breaking down crisis management into clear steps."
"The materials were well-presented and contributed to a smooth learning experience."
Incorporates timely insights into using AI for communication.
"The AI section was an unexpected bonus and showed how to leverage new tech in PR."
"I learned practical ways to use AI to augment and improve our crisis communication."
"It was great to see how AI can streamline processes in media monitoring and response."
Equips learners with practical, real-world applicable strategies.
"I'm now much better equipped to handle media inquiries and develop robust crisis plans."
"The course gave me practical tools and strategies I could immediately apply to my work."
"I found the guidance on stakeholder communication invaluable for real-life situations."

Activities

Be better prepared before your course. Deepen your understanding during and after it. Supplement your coursework and achieve mastery of the topics covered in Media Relations and Crisis Management with these activities:
Attend a Media Industry Event
Attending a media industry event will allow you to connect with professionals in the field and learn about the latest trends.
Browse courses on Media Relations
Show steps
  • Research upcoming events.
  • Register and attend the event.
  • Introduce yourself to people.
Develop a Media Plan
Creating a media plan will help you practice the skills you learn in this course and prepare for real-world scenarios.
Browse courses on Media Relations
Show steps
  • Identify your target audience.
  • Develop key messages.
  • Choose appropriate media channels.
Learn About AI Tools for Crisis Communication
Familiarizing yourself with AI tools can enhance your crisis communication strategies.
Browse courses on AI Tools
Show steps
  • Identify reputable sources for information on AI tools.
  • Explore different AI tools and their capabilities.
  • Consider how AI tools could benefit your crisis communication plan.
Five other activities
Expand to see all activities and additional details
Show all eight activities
Create a Crisis Simulation
Simulating a crisis will allow you to apply the principles you've learned in this course and identify areas for improvement.
Browse courses on Crisis Management
Show steps
  • Develop a realistic scenario.
  • Identify potential stakeholders.
  • Develop a communication plan.
  • Practice your response.
Review 'The Crisis Manager' by Robert J. Wallace
This book provides valuable insights into the principles and practices of effective crisis management.
Show steps
  • Read the book and take notes.
  • Identify key concepts and strategies.
  • Reflect on how the book's insights can inform your crisis communication plan.
Develop a Crisis Communication Plan
Creating a comprehensive crisis communication plan will solidify your understanding of the course material and prepare you for real-world scenarios.
Browse courses on Crisis Communication
Show steps
  • Establish a crisis management team.
  • Identify potential crises.
  • Develop response strategies for each crisis.
  • Communicate the plan to all stakeholders.
Mentor Junior Communicators
Mentoring others allows you to deepen your understanding of crisis communication principles and practices.
Browse courses on Crisis Communication
Show steps
  • Identify opportunities to mentor junior communicators.
  • Provide guidance and support on crisis communication strategies and tactics.
  • Share your experiences and lessons learned.
Contribute to an Open Source Project on Crisis Communication
Contributing to open source projects allows you to gain practical experience and refine your crisis communication skills.
Browse courses on Crisis Communication
Show steps
  • Identify open source projects focused on crisis communication.
  • Review the project's codebase and documentation.
  • Identify areas where you can contribute your skills.
  • Submit your contributions to the project.

Career center

Learners who complete Media Relations and Crisis Management will develop knowledge and skills that may be useful to these careers:

Reading list

We've selected 50 books that we think will supplement your learning. Use these to develop background knowledge, enrich your coursework, and gain a deeper understanding of the topics covered in Media Relations and Crisis Management.
This comprehensive textbook provides a thorough overview of crisis communication theory and practice and includes case studies written by leaders in the field.
Creator of Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), W. Timothy Coombs provides the definitive evidence-based framework for matching organizational response strategies to crisis responsibility, reputational threat, and stakeholder emotion across the full crisis lifecycle.
The definitive benchmark textbook of modern artificial intelligence, rigorously unifying search algorithms, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation, and machine learning into an elegant, coherent agent-based framework.
Studying High Reliability Organizations (HROs) such as aircraft carriers, nuclear power plants, and wildfire crews, Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe establish five mindfulness principles—including preoccupation with failure and deference to expertise—that prevent incipient crises from escalating.
A monumental foundational text establishing the mathematical, algorithmic, and statistical principles of modern deep neural networks, from linear algebra and optimization to convolutional and sequence modeling architectures.
Widely used textbook in academic institutions and provides a comprehensive overview of public relations principles, strategies, and tactics. It's an excellent starting point for gaining a broad understanding of the field, covering foundational concepts and practical applications. The book is valuable as a core textbook for undergraduate students and a solid reference for those new to PR.
Provides an exceptionally practical, code-first curriculum that guides engineers from end-to-end data preprocessing and traditional regression pipelines to production deep learning models and generative neural networks.
Provides a comprehensive overview of crisis communication in the 21st century and includes case studies from a variety of industries.
Addressing the critical aspect of ethics in public relations, this book provides a practical guide to ethical decision-making in the profession. It explores ethical dilemmas and provides frameworks for navigating them responsibly. is essential reading for all PR students and practitioners to ensure ethical practice.
Delivers an authoritative mathematical foundation in Bayesian inference, graphical models, and statistical learning algorithms, bridging foundational probability theory with rigorous predictive computational modeling.
Integrating strategic management with operational incident response, William Rick Crandall, John Parnell, and John Spillan structure crisis preparedness across landscape survey, strategic vulnerability assessment, crisis containment, and organizational learning.
This guide provides a comprehensive exploration of ethical considerations in public relations, including the impact of social media. It's relevant for both students and practitioners seeking to navigate ethical dilemmas in their daily work. is important for fostering responsible and ethical PR practices.
Guides engineers step-by-step through implementing, training, and fine-tuning complete generative transformer architectures in pure PyTorch, providing crystal-clear low-level insight into modern foundation models.
Addressing black-swan disruptions, cascading supply-chain failures, and multi-agency emergency coordination, David Rubens equips C-suite executives and risk directors with command architectures for high-velocity crises.
Presents the foundational treatise on Markov decision processes, temporal-difference learning, and policy gradient methods that underpin autonomous decision-making and modern post-training alignment workflows.
This guide focuses on the critical aspects of research, measurement, and evaluation in public relations, providing methodologies and best practices. It's essential for professionals seeking to demonstrate the value of PR and for students learning how to measure campaign effectiveness. valuable reference for anyone involved in PR planning and evaluation.
This casebook provides a practical approach to understanding and managing communication during crises. It presents various case studies, allowing readers to learn from real-world examples of crisis communication strategies and responses. is particularly useful for students and professionals focusing on crisis management in PR.
Designed around interactive tabletop simulation exercises and real-world corporate crises, W. Timothy Coombs challenges practitioners to draft dark-site statements, triage stakeholder inquiries, and evaluate post-crisis recovery metrics.
Examines holistic architectural patterns for designing resilient machine learning infrastructure, addressing data pipelines, real-time feature stores, continual learning loops, and production deployment reliability.
Specifically addresses the impact of digital on public relations and provides guidance on navigating the digital landscape. It's highly relevant for understanding contemporary PR practices in areas like social media, SEO, and influencer marketing. This book is valuable for professionals seeking to adapt their strategies for the digital age.
Demystifies practical transformer model implementation through the Hugging Face ecosystem, demonstrating how to fine-tune, optimize, and deploy attention architectures across diverse natural language processing and understanding tasks.
Examines the impact of social media on crisis communication and provides strategies for managing crises in the digital age.
Focusing on the strategic aspects of public relations, this book guides readers through the process of planning and executing PR campaigns. It's suitable for advanced students and professionals seeking to develop their strategic thinking in PR. is valuable for understanding how to create effective and measurable PR plans.
Specifically addresses crisis communication and preparedness, a vital aspect of protecting and managing reputation in times of uncertainty. It provides a practical framework for building organizational resilience and effectively responding to crises to minimize reputational damage. This must-read for anyone involved in risk management and crisis response.
Offers a practical guide to creating and implementing a crisis communication plan. It provides a step-by-step process and real-world tested approach for managing communication during a crisis. This book valuable resource for anyone responsible for crisis preparedness and response.
Focusing on operational business continuity and emergency operations centers (EOCs), Edward Devlin details how to constitute a Crisis Management Team, run realistic simulation drills, and coordinate with first responders and regulators.
Focuses on the essential writing skills and media techniques required in public relations. It's a practical guide for students and practitioners looking to hone their writing for various PR materials and effectively engage with the media. This book useful reference for developing core PR competencies.
This provocative book offers an insider's view of media manipulation, providing a critical perspective on the challenges of managing reputation in today's media environment. It highlights the importance of understanding how information can be distorted and the potential vulnerabilities for individuals and organizations. is highly relevant for understanding contemporary threats to reputation.
Directly addresses the contemporary issue of 'post-truth' and its impact on public discourse, trust, and the concept of objective reality. Understanding the dynamics of misinformation, disinformation, and the erosion of trust is essential for navigating and managing reputation in the current complex information environment. It provides crucial context for contemporary reputation challenges.
Bringing together corporate legal counsel and strategic communications perspectives, Thomas Cole and Paul Verbinnen show how boards of directors, general counsel, and PR advisors must align during activist attacks, SEC probes, and executive scandals.
Delivers battle-tested operational patterns for serving foundation models, addressing GPU cluster throughput, semantic caching, automated evaluation benchmarks, and continuous latency minimization.
A foundational text in social psychology, this book explains the core principles that drive persuasion and influence. While not exclusively focused on reputation, understanding these psychological triggers is critical for comprehending how perceptions are formed and managed. It's a must-read for anyone wanting to deepen their understanding of the underlying mechanisms of influence relevant to reputation building.
Considered a classic in the field, this book examines how leading companies build and leverage strong reputations for competitive advantage. It provides a historical perspective and foundational concepts for understanding the strategic importance of reputation. This is essential reading for those seeking a deep understanding of corporate reputation theory and its impact.
Provides a practical andリアル-world approach to public relations, covering essential theories and their application. It's well-suited for undergraduate students and those seeking a practical guide to the profession. The book offers insights into working with clients and managing media relationships, making it a useful reference for aspiring and early-career PR professionals.
A business memoir from a legendary figure in public relations, this book offers insights into the realities of the PR profession through personal and professional anecdotes. It provides a historical perspective and valuable lessons on building and managing brands. must-read for those interested in the history and practice of PR from a seasoned expert.
Details an applied architectural methodology for running high-performance open-weights models on local workstations, tackling quantization fidelity, memory bandwidth limits, and prompt assembly trade-offs.
Another foundational book by a key figure in reputation research, this text explores how companies can translate their corporate image into tangible value. It delves into the strategic management of reputation as a valuable asset and its economic implications. is crucial for understanding the business value derived from a strong reputation.
Serves as a modern guide to public relations, covering essential aspects from ethics to the role of social media. It offers practical advice for those starting in PR and provides updated information on using digital tools. This book good resource for gaining a contemporary understanding of the field.
A classic in the field of psychology with significant relevance to public relations, this book explores the principles of persuasion and how they can be applied ethically. Understanding these principles is crucial for effective communication and influencing public opinion. is highly recommended for anyone in PR looking to deepen their understanding of human behavior.
Analyzing how viral social networks compress response windows from days to minutes, Louis Capozzi and Susan Rucci outline digital listening protocols, rapid escalation workflows, and online reputation containment.
Offers a rigorous theoretical foundation for reasoning under uncertainty, combining graph theory and probability distributions to model complex high-dimensional dependencies across autonomous intelligent systems.
Explores the intersection of public relations and management communication, offering insights into the broader organizational context of PR. It's suitable for advanced students and professionals interested in the strategic role of communication within organizations. This book provides a deeper understanding of how PR functions at a management level.
Provides a practical and tactical guide to managing online reputation, with a focus on technical aspects like search engine optimization and content management. It offers actionable strategies for individuals and businesses to control their digital footprint and address negative online information. This hands-on resource for navigating the technical side of online reputation.
An enduring classic in the field, this book provides a historical perspective and covers the core principles and theories of public relations. While earlier editions are considered classics, updated versions incorporate contemporary issues. It's a valuable resource for understanding the evolution of PR and is often used as a textbook or supplementary reading in PR programs.
Explores the science behind why certain ideas, products, and behaviors become popular and spread. It's highly relevant to contemporary reputation management in the digital age, explaining how word-of-mouth and social transmission impact perception. Understanding these principles is crucial for leveraging online dynamics to build and maintain a positive reputation.
This handbook offers a comprehensive overview of public relations, covering its principles, practices, and various specialisms. It valuable reference for both students and practitioners, providing a solid foundation in the field. The book is useful for gaining a broad understanding and as a reference for specific PR areas.
Hirst, a former BBC journalist, provides practical advice on communicating effectively during a crisis and includes case studies from a variety of industries.
Offers a solid academic and practical overview of corporate reputation, covering its definition, measurement, and strategic management. It provides a strong foundation for understanding the complexities of building and maintaining a positive image for organizations. This valuable resource for both students and professionals seeking a comprehensive understanding of corporate reputation.

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