Master of Arts in Managing Disruption and Violence

Program Summary

DMGS’ M.A. in Managing Disruption and Violence provides theoretical and practical training to help students gain a better understanding of the persuasive communication principles, concepts, and processes organizations need to address the potential or active threat of disruptive or violent group behavior.

National Security and commercial organizations face increasingly complex problems today.

• Terrorists using communications to recruit followers, influence populations and support achieving their goals.
• Potentially disruptive or violent civil protests.
• Foreign use of communications (content) to disrupt governance and policy.
• Activists of competitors disrupting commercial businesses.

Societal and technological changes over recent decades have dramatically changed the dynamics of these threats. The right use of persuasive communications cannot only mitigate these threats but also can often preempt or solve them. The wrong use of communications can greatly exacerbate the problem. Knowing how to engage and persuade in a predictably and measurably successful way is a complex and multi-disciplinary problem.

The Managing Disruption and Violence (MDV) M.A. Program provides the practical persuasive communication principles, concepts, and processes needed by organizations to address the challenges of disruptive or violent behavior from external groups. Graduates of this program will be proficient in the practical skills needed to develop and manage successful persuasive communication programs needed by organizations such as:

• National security departments and agencies.
• Homeland security agencies.
• Major law enforcement organizations.
• Government and commercial consulting/contracting companies.
• Commercial corporations.
• Advocacy groups.

The methodology taught to achieve this complex problem solving is the Integrated Risk Value © methodology. At a basic level, the goal of most organizational communications is to persuade people to adopt the desired behavior. What makes these communications different is based on “who” you are, “whom” you are messaging to, and “why” you are messaging to them. Depending on how these three aspects are situationally defined, the dynamics, understanding, applications, and consequences can differ tremendously despite the intersection of many common terms, concepts and disciplines. Integrated Risk Value (IRV) methodology focuses on organizations that are communicating with external audiences who are potentially or actively participating in disruptive or violent behavior.

Graduates of the degree program will be able to:

• Understand, recognize and apply the principles and concepts of IRV methodology for Managing Disruption and Violence;
• Understand and apply the processes of IRV strategy development and Measures of Effectiveness (MOE) for Managing Disruption and Violence;
• Analyze and evaluate real-world communications and strategy for effectiveness;
• Create predictably successful communication strategies through use of IRV principles, concepts and processes for Managing Disruption and Violence; and
• Effectively communicate in writing and oral presentations.