The good news is that a career in mass communication is highly diverse. It opens you up to the entire world. In other words, you can fit into any industry. You can build a career as an employee working with corporate, government, or non-government organizations. Or you can pursue a career as an independent professional. You can even build your own business if you choose. With a degree in mass communication and commensurate communication skill, it’s relatively easy to move across industries and career paths.

A Mass Communication major lays the groundwork for understanding the foundations and major principles of mass media and can lead to a mass media career and beyond. Students apply basic concepts learned in the major to any communication path they follow. If you are pursuing a career in a traditional media field such as advertising, public relations, or journalism, you can apply your understanding of media learned in the program to a wide range of work. 

Students have launched careers as free-lance videographers, musicians, wedding planners, doctors, designers, information specialists, research analysts, writers, editors, community affairs, leaders in the non-profit sector, and in corporate and institutional media (producing visual, audio, written, and multimedia materials for training and instruction, internal and external communications, sales, and public relations). Other careers include:

• Account Manager

• Director

• Literary Agent

• Public Relations Manager

• Advertising Salesperson

• Media Buyer Or Planner

• Publicity Director

• Assignment Editor

• Editor

• News Director

• Research Analyst

• Engineer

• Newscaster

• Scriptwriter

• Broadcast Technician

• Event Coordinator

• Photojournalist

• Sound Mixer

• Film Editor

• Producer

• Production Design

• Graphic Designer

• Production Management

• Program Director

• Lighting Director

• Promotion Representative

Of course, some of these positions may require additional training. However, the mass communication undergraduate degree is preparation for many of the careers listed. This degree means you’ve studied an extremely broad field and now have a world of career options. Mass communications is the transmission of information through mass media. In other words, it is literally any job dealing with media from news anchor to magazine publisher to music producer. 

To narrow the possibilities for you, here are six categories to explore:

Journalism

We can’t talk about the media without a nod to the original. Contrary to popular belief, journalism isn’t dead. it’s just transforming before our eyes, becoming increasingly intertwined with other types of media. There are several reasons you may want to pursue a career in journalism even today, including the excitement of breaking a big story.

Public Relations

As mentioned before, public relations is often an option for former journalists, and the skills are surprisingly transferrable. Public relations still requires storytelling, albeit for a specific company, group or cause. 

Corporate Communications

Corporate communications includes internal communications from newsletters and emails to executive correspondence. It may not include the same mass as other mass communications (depending, of course, on the size of the company), but corporate communications plays a vital role in any company’s operations.

Advertising

Are you a big fan of creativity? Are you a big fan of creativity in a high-pressure environment? Advertising might be for you. This communications niche includes (and is not limited to) copywriting, design and multimedia campaigns. More than anything, it’s steeped in strategy, much like its parent field of marketing. To be truly successful in advertising, it may help to have a more specialized degree. However, mass communications easily prepares you for account management and top-level planning positions.

Marketing

The golden child of mass communication. A marketing-specific degree is considered one of the most hireable, and marketing positions usually pay well. Because it is in and of itself a broad and innovative field, marketing provides opportunities for people from all sorts of backgrounds to get a job and work their way up. Read more here!