Self-funded Undergraduate Programmes

The Internet, mobile technologies, and social media have given marketers more tools to satisfy customer needs with global reach, round-the-clock service, and meaningful customer interactions. The big question is, how could these tools be integrated into existing marketing strategies in the “Digital Economy”? This course is designed to guide future marketing experts in using internet-based technologies to develop and implement digital marketing strategy, with a specific focus on global brands and markets.

This course focuses on providing students with the knowledge and experience of brand building and management. On successful completion of this course, students should understand the nature and importance of branding building in marketing practice. In addition, they should also possess the strategic thinking and techniques in developing and managing brands that enhance an organization’s marketing competence.

Classics involve innovations and canons. They not only demonstrate the creative intensity but also the force of shaping the development of subsequent works. This course will survey a number of film and television classics from America, Europe, and Asia created by various auteurs and of various genres. By exploring the definitive and enduring qualities of these “classics”, the course will analyze the cultural and industrial significance of these texts.

The course aims to give a comprehensive introduction to Hollywood cinema, examining its cultural and aesthetic significance. By spotlighting some movies within the economic and historical context of their production, circulation, and consumption, it explores and interprets Hollywood cinema in history and in the present, in theory and in practice.

This course aims to address different topics of the Hong Kong Cinema, mainly focusing on the 1970’s to the post 97’ period. Genres, gender issues, and transnational movies will be analysed.

This course will introduce the basic concept and comprehensive historical development of non-fiction films (in this course, we focus on documentary films only, although non-fiction films include avant-garde films, educational films and industrial films, etc.). It introduces students to the fascinating world of documentaries and the intriguing but inspiring relationship between reality and its representation. The aesthetics of realism and documentary as political propaganda will also be discussed and explored.

This course offers language improvement and writing practice designed to develop the professional-level writing skills for first-time managers needed in a professional business environment. This course is designed to give students a comprehensive view of communication, its scope and importance in business settings. The various types of business communication in computed-mediated environments are covered. This course also develops an awareness of the importance of succinct writing style to modern business communication.

This course will present fundamental concepts and principles of Interactive Advertising Management. The course begins with an introduction to existing interactive advertising tools, then focuses on practical application to specified communication problems and customer’s journey. Students will acquire useful data interpretation techniques in managing; and selecting media and non-media based interactive advertising tools over the course of the marketing communication planning process.

This course addresses basic issues of the contemporary media business environment from the economic, political, and organizational perspectives. Cases and strategies related to the performance of the traditional and digital media industry in global and local environments will be discussed.

To enhance the marketing communication decision qualities, this course presents to future leaders the studies of the role consumer behaviour plays in the development and implementation of integrated marketing communication campaigns in Hong Kong and Asia. It examines the consumer decision-making process in both physical and digital environments and how they vary in different types of purchases, the various psychological processes including consumer learning process, and external factors such as culture, social class, group influences in these contexts.

This course provides an overview of the process of digital communication, and how digital media are used in various media industries. It will first introduce the nature and characteristics of digital media, and their relations to the changing nature and media consumption activities of audiences. The course will then focus on how digital media are used in various media industries including journalism, public relations and advertising. At the end of the course, students will gain hands-on skills in managing works presented in the digital communication area.

This course adopts an interdisciplinary approach to investigate fashion communication as a specialized topic of communication studies. The notion of fashion will be assessed from different dimensions – textual, visual, physical, psychological, and spatial; its intricate relations to art, culture, history, philosophy, media, marketing, democracy, discrimination, and exploitation will be addressed. Meanwhile, the means of communication adopted by the international fashion conglomerates to market fashion, inclusive of fashion shows, magazine publishing, and advertising in the Asian context, will also be examined.

This course takes students through a number of the most influential theories of journalism regarding the performance, role, function, and effects of journalism and media in modern society, with a specific emphasis on issues in the greater China region. We have three primary tasks: a) to provide a basic understanding of journalism and mass media as social institutions; b) to give students an ability to critically evaluate the interplay between journalism and the larger socio-political environment; and c) to enhance students’ knowledge about the production, content, meaning, and impact of news.

This course focuses on the study of Hong Kong television and social change, the role of TV in the formation and maintenance of HK cultural identities, and its impact on other media and on the Asian Community. The course explores the Hong Kong TV industry in its socio-historical context, televisual discourses, audience reception, as well as in relation with society from late 50’s to the present. The multi-screen phenomenon and its influence to the TV industry in the digital era will also be discussed.

In this course, students will learn to understand and appreciate different performing arts genres including dance, drama, stand-up comedy, music, & musical. Emphasis will be placed on the aesthetic principles of the modern society. Students will learn how to appreciate a performance and will have to attend live shows/concerts for cultural experience and journal-keeping.

The course aims at developing students’ aesthetic sense and creativity on visual communication. It begins with an introduction on concepts of multimedia design and then focuses on applying them to visual analysis and appreciation, also providing creative solutions for specified communication problems. Students will possess useful techniques to design visual communication tasks with a range of multi-media applications (e.g., desktop publishing, video production and editing, and multimedia design, etc.). Through hands-on practices, students will be enabled to visualize their ideas effectively in the industry.

This course provides detailed and intensive study of special topics of importance in communication. Depending of the expertise of the teaching faculty, one or more special topics in the section of Course Content will be covered. New special topics can be added.

The course is designed to develop students’ observation of society phenomenon into entrepreneurship opportunities. The course will concentrate on the concepts and implications of entrepreneurship projects. In the process of developing entrepreneurship projects, students will learn practical techniques including business presentation, personal marketing, career path setting, and establishing potential business partnerships in the field. This course provides both theoretical and practical knowledge for students’ understanding on the Importance of effective entrepreneurship management and sustainability of the business.

This course introduces some fundamental principles in financial management for first-time business managers and future investor communication leaders. The instructor will guide students to get familiar with the financial statements, corporate finance practices pertaining to investor communication, and behavioural finance with reference to the Hong Kong investment market. The course shall enhance marketing communication students’ appreciation of financial literacy that ultimately enhance communication decision-making qualities to enhance corporate values in their junior leadership roles.

This course explores both the practical and theoretical dimensions of journalism in order to provide a perspective for public relations practice in the digital era. It will start with a discussion of news patterns and major problems in local journalism. The course will then introduce various perspectives in understanding the journalistic practice in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Online journalism will also be covered. Journalism will be presented as both a social process and a profession. Students may expect to learn the intellectual foundations of both the professional duty of a journalist and the role of journalism in society and in turn understand how public relations should practice in accordance to the role of a journalist so as to gain publicity through journalistic coverage in the digital era.

This course aims at inventing a foundation for students to apply the creative thinking skills throughout different tasks, roles and occasions. The course provides possible road-maps for students to think and work creatively. It starts with the introduction of the term Creativity, why creativity and then followed by how to apply creativity in real life situations. This course takes students through the confluence view of creativity, the expression and combination of creativity and the principles in creative problem solving. Students will develop their idea generation fluency and expand their imagination capacity through exercises of different creative thinking techniques and continuous reflection of their own creative efforts.

This course aims to equip students with strategic communication and management techniques required for a young manager to cope with the rapidly expanding recreation, sports and entertainment industries. These professionals are not only required by recreation, sport, and entertainment organizations, but are also essential in other private, public and voluntary organizations with the objective of promoting their corporate images, products or services via these leisure and entertainment events. With an emphasis in recreation, sport and entertainment events, this course incorporates key elements of successful PR event management and promotion strategies in these industries which stressed audiences’ experiences, including live and mediated forms. Introduction to these experiential industries; planning in stage events; sponsorship, audience analysis as well as media and community relations will be also covered.

This course develops future communication leaders competency in handling complex global business environment. Students will appreciate various issues concerning global marketing, which are affected by a variety of factors that are socioeconomic, political, legal as well as financial and cultural, all of which are in many ways affecting global marketing operations in the fast-paced digital contexts. Students will learn to analyse the characteristics of selected regional markets and strategic options for entry and expansion in those markets and also international marketing mix decisions. By the end of the course, students should have a greater understanding of the various issues behind the practical problems of global marketing and should be able to develop corporate marketing strategies for global markets for specific companies.

This course investigates the development and use of integrated marketing communication in China. The socio-political-economic issues affecting the practice of IMC in China will be discussed to provide students with a general background. To help students become familiar with these practices, we will also investigate regulatory and ethical issues, consumer behaviours, direct marketing, and corporate social responsibilities, to understand how practitioners encounter and handle IMC issues. To better comprehend the concepts provided in this course, case studies will be used and guest speakers will be invited.

This course aims to equip students with the strategic public relations skillsets required for a young manager. It goes beyond the traditional perspective on public relations executions by emphasizing strategic elements of public relations in the digital era. It focuses on relationship of public relations management to organizational structure, communication functions, and organizational effectiveness. The challenges of the public relations industry with rapid technology advancement in the digital era will also be covered.

This course aims to provide students with key principles, theories and relationships among various communication channels of retail brand contact. Students will learn the different theories of consumer behaviour, consumer’s perception of brand identity, different communication channels including in-store and off-site digital channels for retailers to reach and influence customers. We will also study the influence of retail space design and merchandising over consumer purchases synergizes with new media in an ever-challenging and dynamic business environment. Through exposure to different theories and research studies, case studies and field trip, students should be able to analyse, integrate, and develop effective and efficient communication campaigns, store layout design, and in-store merchandising to achieve pre-set brand communication objectives.

This course aims to equip students with the necessary skillsets required for a young financial communication manager. It provides students with the knowledge and concepts of financial communication and investor relations in both theoretical and practical aspects. Various key dimensions of financial communication and investor relations are explored, including methodologies, market practices, main stakeholders (media, investment community, shareholders, analysts, brokers, employees, rating agencies, and consumers of financial products), activities (corporate reporting, shareholder meeting, roadshow, and press release), critical situations (initial public offering, corporate spin-off, profit warning, merger and acquisition, fund raising, restructuring, and financial crisis), and legal/regulatory requirements. Students are expected to acquire an understanding of how financial and related information is created, packaged, and disseminated by a company's management team, as well as to understand the impact of the management team’s decisions on external users’ interpretation of such information.

This course aims to introduce the fundamental knowledge and hands-on skills of big data analytics in the field of media and communication. Special focus will be placed on techniques for searching, collecting, analysing, interpreting, and visualizing data. Technical details include, but not limited to, web crawling, data storage, data analysis, text mining, social network analysis, and data visualization, based on open source software packages. Through a variety of teaching learning activities, such as class demonstrations, individual exercises, quizzes and collaborative projects, by the end of the semester, students are expected to become capable to collect big data from different data sources, i.e., social media harvesting, web scraping, online archiving or indexing data retrieving, with open source software packages. Students are also expected to produce socially, culturally, or commercially meaningful data-driven narrative outputs, such as data-driven journalistic report, data visualization, data-driven business analysis, and computational social science research reports. Meanwhile, critical reflection on the overuse and abuse of big data and relevant ethical and legal controversies will be discussed throughout the semester as well.

ICM students are encouraged to undertake a non-graded and zero-credit internship. The internship is normally of at least two months full-time employment or professional practice during the summer between Year 3 and Year 4, but it can be a minimum of 160 hours of work. Students are required to conform to all reasonable requirements of their internship employer. During the internship, students are expected to appreciate the supervision and management styles of their employers. This becomes an invaluable experience in shaping the students’ future leadership style. Both the employer and the student file reports with the Course Director after the internship.

The objective of this course is to examine one of the most prominent development paradigms in the last twenty years – sustainable development from the communication perspective. Sustainable development implies a participatory and multi-stakeholder approach to policy making and implementation, mobilizing public and private resources for development and making use of the knowledge, skills and energy of all social groups concerned with the future of the planet and its people. Within this framework, communication plays a strategic and fundamental role in the interplay of the different development factors, improving the sharing of knowledge and information, as well as the active participation of all concerned. The course is designed to enhance students’ awareness of issues of sustainability in Hong Kong, guiding them to consider the contribution of media technologies and communication strategies in achieving sustainable development goals. In collaboration with NGOs and community partners, the learning will start from understanding real world scenarios and current efforts by NGOs to achieve some of the 17 sustainable development goals set by the United Nations, including the eradication of poverty, empowerment of vulnerable groups, and the conservation of natural environment and resources for future generations. Students will team up with an NGO and complete a creative project to propose a communication campaign to help promote and achieve these goals through the use of media technologies and communication strategies.

This course is designed to introduce a wide range of perspectives about gender and communication. To enhance students’ understanding of gender issues in communication, the course starts with an overview of various theoretical approaches to gender studies, and then investigate how concepts of gender are produced, circulated and consumed by media audiences. The main purpose of the course is to sharpen students’ critical thinking and analytical skills in identifying and discussing the construction, mediation, representation and misrepresentation of gender in the global context of media communication.

This course is designed to provide the theoretical and practical training to negotiation and conflict management. Emphasis is put on the negotiation workshop approach which will be adopted to provide various simulated exercises to help students apply concepts into practice. The subject will also cover aspects the background and current applications of lobbying as a global industry which thrives wherever democracy is established. The course will be comprised of lectures, class discussions based on readings, class presentations, and viewing and interpreting various texts. The course readings are both practical and theoretical, and while many of them focus on specific case studies, they are intended to provoke thoughtfulness in each student such that it can be applied to a variety of real life situations. Students will also get an opportunity to produce their own presentations.

This course introduces students to various forms of analytical, commentary and opinion writing on different media platforms, such as newspapers, magazines, blogs or news websites. Students will learn the principles and techniques of making opinion writing persuasive through building arguments and structuring facts and comments. Through an examination of political, social, public relations or environmental issues, the course helps students to develop both their analytical skills and writing skills for print or online media. As a lot of cases in the local context will be examined and discussed, the medium of instruction is Chinese.