By Briana Linney —
U of L Professor Karen Freberg recently published her third textbook, “Social Media for Strategic Communication: Creative Strategies and Research-Based Applications.” Her book, available August 2018, aims to bridge the art and science of social media and strategic communication.
Freberg has taught at U of L for almost 10 years and teaches strategic communicaion and social media classes.
“This is the book I felt needed to be written not just for strategic communication classes, but it could be used across disciplines,” Freberg said. “Until I started teaching social media and realized how there was not a book out there that really was the complete package. As each year went on, the more frustrated I got.”
Freberg’s parents suggested she write her own textbook, and in October 2016 she submitted her proposal to Sage Publications. The company accepted her proposal in the following December and gave her a year to complete it.
“I had to write essentially a chapter a month,” Freberg said. “The time I found doing this was weekends, early morning before my half-marathon training and when I was on the go. I wrote on planes. I wrote in cars. I wrote all various locations around the world from the U.S., to overseas in France and England. Any chance I got, I spent time writing and working on my book.”
The 13-chapter textbook has additional resources. Each chapter begins with a story from a leading professional in the industry.
“Professors and professionals want to have certain resources to make their lives easier teaching and working. If you do not invest in creating these resources for others, you are going to lose a ton of people and this is something they are desperately wanting,” Freberg said.
Freberg said she’s received compliments about the accessibility of the text. A reviewer hailed it as “not textbook-ie,” and that it would be a book she and her students would keep.
Along with authoring the book, Freberg created slides, test banks, exercises, resources and an instructor’s manual to go along with it.
Freberg plans to start using her textbook to instruct her classes in the upcoming fall semester.
Photo Courtesy / U of L
