An algorithm decides who sees you. You're about to work both sides of that.
Digital PR isn't pitching a gatekeeper anymore. It's running your own media operation, and working through people who already built an audience. You do both at once, for fourteen weeks.
Run a real account
Build and run a live account on one platform for eight weeks. You own the audience, and you find out exactly what that costs.
Do the practitioner's job
Rent audiences instead: vet creators against a real client brief, measure what actually happened, handle it when it goes wrong.
Start here
You're in Section 1, so you go first: Tuesday 1 September, 12:30–15:20. This deck is what we go through in the room. Skim it beforehand, keep it afterwards.
You're in Section 2, so your first class is Monday 7 September. The cohort opens Tuesday 1 September with an orientation your section doesn't get. This deck is that session. Go through it before we meet.
Orientation & platform scouting
Thirty-two slides, about an hour if you do the exercise, which you should. Every assignment, the AI policy, what to expect week by week, and the exercise that leads to your platform choice. Use ← → or tap the edges.
SECTION 2: this replaces the Tuesday orientation. Nothing assessed happens there.
- Go through the orientation deck, including the three-part exercise on slides 20–23. Write your answers down.
- Read the syllabus properly, especially attendance and the AI policy.
- Shortlist three platforms, and write one honest sentence on why you'd be credible in each.
- Open the Session 1 reading on Moodle.
Schedule
The two sections meet on different days, so every date shows as a pair. Yours is highlighted. Flip it in the header if it's wrong.
| # | Sec 2 · Mon | Sec 1 · Tue | Topic | Due |
|---|
Section 2 meets eleven times, Section 1 thirteen: the semester opens on a Tuesday and Monday 19 October is a public holiday. Eleven content sessions are common to both. Section 1's two extra Tuesdays are orientation and supervised studio; no assessed content is delivered there, and equivalent material is on this site and in office hours.
Subject to minor revision. Changes announced in class and on Moodle.
The account
Open a new account, run it from Session 3 to Session 10, submit the portfolio on Friday 27 November. You're graded on how well you reason about your own data, not on how fast you grow.
Positioning brief
Two pages, start of Session 3. Pass/revise, not graded, but nothing launches until it passes. Platform and defence, subject and audience, weekly output commitment, three or four content pillars, success criteria that aren't follower count, ethics and risk plan.
Weekly decision log
Eight entries, 250 words each, each carrying a dated screenshot of your native analytics. Same four-part structure every week. Draft below.
Retrospective + evidence
1,500 words on what the data taught you about your audience, your platform's distribution logic, and your own assumptions, plus two decisions you'd reverse. Dated evidence appendix covering all eight weeks.
Decision log drafter
Four fields, the same four every week. Drafts live in this browser on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere, and nothing here counts as submitted. Copy each finished entry into Moodle.
The hypothesis you were testing
What did you believe would happen, and why? A hypothesis can be proven wrong. "Post more" can't.
What you published
Format, timing, hook, and anything you deliberately changed from last week.
What the data did
Numbers from your native analytics, not your impression of them. Include what did not move.
What you'll change, and why
The "why" is the part being marked. A change with no reasoning behind it reads as noise.
Book office hours
Grab a twenty-five minute slot. Bring the thing you're stuck on: a platform you can't decide between, analytics that make no sense, a log entry you're not sure is any good.
What's worth a slot
Anything you'd rather not work out alone: choosing your platform, reading your analytics, sanity-checking a log entry before you commit to eight weeks of the same approach, or talking through a creator shortlist.
Section 2: the Chung Yeung week is office hours instead of the supervised studio Section 1 gets. Use it.
Can't make Monday afternoon?
Email lolawxie@hkbu.edu.hk and we'll find another time. Quick questions are usually faster in the account clinic, the first fifteen minutes of every class.
Q&A
If you're wondering, four other people are too. Send a question, anonymously if you'd rather, and the useful ones get answered here for everyone.
How this works
Questions come in anonymously. I answer the ones that help more than one person here, usually within a couple of days, and the rest in the account clinic at the start of class.
Anything about your grade, your own circumstances, or anything you'd rather not have in public: email me instead, or book a slot.
Nothing you ask here affects your participation mark. Asking early is the opposite of a problem.
Toolkit
Practical guides, released after the session that introduces them. If something's missing when you need it, ask in the account clinic.
Reference
No textbook, nothing to buy. All readings are on Moodle, organized by session, roughly one scholarly reading and one industry source per week.
Assessment
Five components. The through-line is judgement: about your own data, about creators you'd stake a client's budget on, and about where a model was wrong for your specific audience.
Attendance, participation & studio labs
Continuous. Includes the positioning brief gate and one analytics certification of your choosing.
AI content labs (× 2)
Individual. Prompt chain, unedited output, edited version, 200-word critique. The critique is what's graded.
Lab 2 due Session 9
The account: portfolio
Individual, eight-week practicum. Eight decision log entries, a 1,500-word retrospective, dated evidence appendix.
Rubric: evidential rigor 30 · analytical quality 30 · conceptual integration 25 · presentation 15
Creator selection & vetting memo
Paired. One client brief for the whole class, fixed budget, 2,000 words plus appendix. Shortlist eight to ten, recommend three, defend the allocation.
Due start of Session 10
Mid-term examination
In class, invigilated, closed-book, closed-AI. 100 minutes. Short answers on Sessions 1–6, then an unseen crisis scenario.
Tue 27 Oct (Sec 1)
Final examination
Held during the University examination period. Format and preparation guidance announced during the semester.