The paper seeks to gain insight into the nature of teaching strategic communication to US military members and Allies for outlining the learning needs of communication practitioners in a digitalized mediated world and for contributing to theorizing transdisciplinary practice.
With the emergence of digital media and its increasing significance, the teaching of strategic communication for the US military and its allies at the Defense Information School (DINFOS) prioritizes the collaboration of researchers, practitioners and leaders in digitalized media for the co-creation of knowledge and skills. This paper aims to gain insight into the nature of their activities for outlining the learning needs of communication practitioners in a digitalized mediated world and for contributing to theorizing transdisciplinary practice. I provide an analysis of a workshop on strategic communication by DINFOS in 2017 focusing on the integration of digitalized media into communicative practice. The workshop contains 23 lectures over four days for practitioners by senior officers, academic researchers and persons from social media companies, like Twitter and Instagram. The lectures are analyzed using qualitative content analysis (Krippendorf 2004), involving a four-part method of constructing meaning units. The overarching themes are then discussed in relation to transdisciplinarity (Perrin and Kramsch 2018), focusing on the diversity of epistemes (Pennycook 2018) involved in the teaching of strategic communication (Klein 2008). The paper concludes by conveying the implications for needs analysis as well as challenges and opportunities for curriculum development of English for Specific Purposes (Flowerdew 2013). References Flowerdew, Lynne. 2013. Needs Analysis and Curriculum Development in ESP. In The Handbook of English for Specific Purposes. Edited by Brian Paltridge and Sue Starfield. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. 325-346. Klein, Julie T. 2008. Education. In Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research. Edited by Gertrude Hirsch Hadorn et al.: Springer: Bern, Switzerland. 399-410. Krippendorf, Klaus. 2004. Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. London: Sage. Pennycook, Alistair. 2018. Applied linguistics as epistemic assemblage. AILA Review. 31. 113-134. Perrin, Daniel and Claire Kramsch. 2018. Transdisciplinarity in applied linguistics. AILA Review. 31. 1-13.
