Ph.D. in Communication Theory & Research

The Ph.D. program prepares students to conduct original research on communication processes and effects, within the tradition of the social and behavioral sciences. Most graduates enter academic teaching and research careers, or communication-related professions that require quantitative research skills. After a core curriculum of courses in empirical methods, statistics, and mass communication theory, each student builds a research specialization through advanced courses and seminars in Communication and related departments, research projects, teaching, and an examination in the area of concentration. These requirements are normally completed in three years, and the dissertation in the fourth year.

Stanford's Ph.D. program in Communication has been, since its founding by Chilton Bush and Wilbur Schramm in the 1950s, an intense preparation for social scientific research on communication processes and effects. The department continues to be a major source of professors of mass communication nationally and internationally. For example, over the past five years our students have received tenure track positions at New York University, the University of Michigan, the Annenberg School of Communication, the Ohio State University, the University of Amsterdam, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and the University of Georgia, to name a few.

Faculty in the Institute for Communication Research involve their doctoral students in a wide variety of research projects. The program is largely an apprenticeship, so it is important for each student to join a project and to work closely with an advisor by the second year. Each Ph.D. student teaches at least two courses. In recent years, many of Stanford's Communication Ph.D. graduates have been offered tenure-track university faculty appointments.