Understanding professional communication is essential for understanding how organisations and communication imagine, enact, and change their culture and lived realities. Professional Communication is an essential resource for anyone interested in understanding and navigating the multifaceted, complex, and dynamic world of professional communication, including issues and trends in the field.
Through real-world case studies and scenarios, Professional Communication explores key themes of technological disruption, industrial convergence, and the future of professional communication across increasingly complex platform ecosystems. It highlights the critical skills, core competencies, and ethical considerations necessary to navigate the evolving landscape and prepare students for diverse professional communication roles. As well as discussions on crucial ethical and cultural considerations in professional communication, the collection includes strategies for engaging diverse audiences and stakeholders. Showcasing practical guides for building effective communication strategies, the collection offers insights into trends in the field, the necessary skills for ever-changing roles in professional communication, and the increasing importance of fostering social good.
The collection is divided into four major thematic sections, each of which details the increasingly blurred boundaries, convergence, and hybridisation of existing professional communication industries and disciplines. Reflecting the ever-changing nature of contemporary professional communication, the collection’s modular structure caters to students and emerging professionals across a range of disciplines, fields, and roles, providing a flexible resource for excelling in today’s and tomorrow’s evolving professional communication landscape.
Professional Communication is an essential resource for anyone interested in understanding and navigating the multifaceted, complex and dynamic world of professional communication, including issues and trends in the field. It caters to students and emerging professionals across a range of disciplines, fields and roles.
Section 1: Professional Communication Landscapes and Foundations
Chapter 1: Professional Communication: Influencing, Engaging and Transforming
in an Era of Disruption
Glen Donnar & Lukas Parker
Chapter 2: Transformations in Communication and Media in the Digital Era
Nguyen Thang Van Long
Chapter 3: Digital Communication Platforms
Rowan Wilken & Scott Brook
Chapter 4: Digital Audiences and Analytics
Edward Hurcombe
Chapter 5: Visual Communication
TJ Thomson
Chapter 6: Professional Communication and Ethics
Jay Daniel Thompson
Section 2: Strategy and Stakeholders
Chapter 7: Strategy, Planning and Evaluation
David Micallef
Chapter 8: Bridging Strategy and Society: Issue Arenas in Strategic
Communication
Jeroen Jonkman & Christian Burgers
Chapter 9: Issues, Risks, and Crisis Communication in the Age of
'Permacrisis'
Mai Anh Doan
Chapter 10: Client Management: Mind the Gap
Linda Brennan & David Micallef
Chapter 11: Stakeholder and Community Engagement
Michaela Jackson
Chapter 12: Political Communication: Practices, Professionals, and
Perspectives
Ella Chorazy
Chapter 13: Strategic Relationship Building in Professional Communication
Kim Burley
Chapter 14: Intercultural Communication Competence in Teams
Marcella A. LaFever
Section 3: Influencing and Engaging
Chapter 15: People and Persuasion
Shima Saniei & Lukas Parker
Chapter 16: Changing Attitudes and Understanding
Hue Duong & Mor Yachin
Chapter 17: Motivating Action and Changing Behaviour
Diem-Trang Vo, Justin Battin & Nguyen Thang Van Long
Chapter 18: Effectively Engaging Consumers with Marketing Micro-Narratives
Syarifah Nurleyana Wafa, Rabiah Adawiah Abu Seman & Nurzihan Hassim
Chapter 19: Visual Elements in Science and Environmental Communication
Allyson Crimp & Jenny A. Robinson
Chapter 20: Health Communication
Linda Brennan & Eva L. Jenkins
Chapter 21: Objectively Speaking: Journalism's Changing Voice Online and in
Social Media
Diana Bossio
Section 4: Transforming Professional Communication Futures
Chapter 22: Advancing Disability Inclusion in Organisational Communication: A
Rationale for Collective Access
Ashleigh Haw
Chapter 23: Participatory Communication and Development for Social Change:
Insights from African Approaches
Eliza Govender & Emmanuel Essel
Chapter 24: Integrating Indigenous Practices: The Value of Indigenous
Methodologies in Communication
Maria Stratford & Mona Chatskin
Chapter 25: Automated Media and the Technologies of the Platform Economy
Dang Nguyen
Chapter 26: Locating Creativity and Professional Communications in the AI
era
Iain MacRury
Chapter 27: Creativity in Professional Communication and the Cultural and
Creative Industries
Julie Bilby
Glen Donnar is a Senior Lecturer in Professional Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He is the co-editor of Asian Celebrity Cultures in the Digital Age (2025) and author of Troubling Masculinities: Terror, Gender, and Monstrous Others in American Film Post-9/11 (2020).
Lukas Parker is a Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Australia, where he leads the Communication and Social Change Co-Lab (3C). His social marketing and behaviour change research focuses on health and sustainability issues.
