Communications and Advocacy Strategy

Description from DukeHub

This course equips students with foundational skills in advocacy and strategic communications, two interrelated competencies essential to public policy professionals across sectors. The first half of the course emphasizes advocacy strategy: setting goals, mapping power and influence, identifying target audiences, selecting tactics, and executing, monitoring, and evaluating campaigns. The second half focuses on communications strategy, teaching students to craft persuasive messages, choose the right messengers and distribution channels, and respond to crises. The course culminates in a team-based project integrating both skill sets.

Skills

• public speakingtitle: "advocacy"
• policy and lawdepartment: PUBPOL
• leadershipdescription: "strategy" and 2 more

AI-resilient: 2 of 5 2/5

• No: Physical, lab or field work
• ✓Yes: Live work with people · "teaching"
• ✓Yes: Judgment someone is accountable for · "strategy"
• No: A craft you practice with your hands or body
• No: Small, in-person format

The checks lean on Microsoft Research, Working with AI (2025), which found generative AI applies least to physical work and hands-on work with people. A signal, not a promise. How the score works

More in PUBPOL

• Introduction to Policy Analysis PUBPOL 101D
• Risk, Rules, and the American Social Safety Net PUBPOL 109CNS
• What Is a University For? Higher Education in An Age of Uncertainty PUBPOL 112CN
• Governing Corporate Power: Rules, Democracy, and Human Rights PUBPOL 113CNS
• Applied Statistics for Public Policy PUBPOL 150D
• Who Gets What - and Why? Public Policy, Health, and Opportunity in the US PUBPOL 191CC

All PUBPOL courses · All of Sanford