Carl Botan

Carl Botan

Carl Botan

Professor

Strategic communication as it is used in both public relations and strategic and emergency communication

Carl Botan is a Professor of Communication  at George Mason University. He teaches undergraduate courses in Public Relations and graduate courses in Public Relations Theory, Research Methods, Introduction to Graduate Studies, International Relations, and Strategic Communication.

Dr. Botan received his B.S. from Western Michigan University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Communication and Rhetorical Processes from Wayne State.

In addition to teaching at George Mason University, he is also an affiliated faculty with the National Center for Biodefense, the Center for Social Research, the Center for Health and Strategic Communication Research, and the Center of Excellence in Climate Change Communication.

He has presented more than 50 international lectures on strategic communication and public relations, in countries such as Korea, Norway, Brazil, Australia, Germany, Austria, Romania, Bahamas, Egypt and Canada.

An interesting fact about Dr. Botan is that he was born in the northern Canadian woods and lived on a small island in the Great Lakes until he was six. There was no electricity and only two horses to pull the sleigh in the winter.

Selected Publications

He has co-authored 5 books, two of which have won awards, and his articles have been published in a number of scholarly journals including Public Relations Review, Journal of Public Relations Research, Journal of Communication, Communication Research Reports, Communication Education, and Journal of Business Communication.

Dissertations Supervised

Heather Riddell, Crisis Communication on Social Media: A Comparison of User-Generated Messages to Traditional Media and Organizational Framing (2018)

Yue Hu, Turning Disaster Into Renewal: Governmental Renewal Discourse in Rebuilding Wenchuan Earthquake-Damaged Communities (2012)

Janey G. Trowbridge, Structuration and Intractability in Environmental Public Participation and Decision Making: An International Case Study (2012)

Jungmi Jun, Strategic Communication Responses to Racial Discrimination (SCRRD): A Mixed-Method Co-cultural Approach to the Case of Asian Americans (2011)