HSE Media Projects Recognized in Two Competitions

During the pandemic, the university launched several internal communications projects aimed at better informing and supporting the university community in the constantly changing environment.

In September 2021, this work undertaken by the PR Office received strong recognition by the professional community and was mentioned in two relevant competitions. First, two HSE projects — The Other HSE Day and Development of a Media Network for Internal Communications at HSE University — made it onto the short list of the prestigious PROBA Awards (the award is given during Europe’s biggest international communications event). And on September 20, the Rudnik Award ceremony took place at HSE University, with the Internal Communications Unit winning a special prize at the ceremony.

The main communications achievement during the pandemic were the sustainable and effective communication channels developed for the internal HSE community, which includes over 30,000 students and over 9,000 teachers and employees at the Moscow campus alone. In addition to the key platform with official university information — the HSE University Life website — a Telegram channel with the same name has been actively growing for two years. Its subscribers already number more than 19,000. In July 2021, another Telegram channel was launched specially for staff called ‘I Work at HSE’. Key information related to the pandemic and vaccination was housed on the Coronavirus Live page. Beginning in March 2020, all staff members began receiving the Morning HSE digest with the most important news. The key student channel — STUDLIFE HSE (VK, Telegram and Instagram) — changed its content strategy. The creators focused on maintaining the community during remote learning and supporting student extracurricular associations. The topic of mental health has also become an important issue. The communications staff teamed up with the Centre of Psychological Counselling to prepare a series of publications aimed at supporting students, and today, a themed podcast is being prepared to launch.

In addition, the launch of Instagram accounts for university buildings and special classroom projects for students, teachers, staff and external audiences was a significant activity. For example, the Pokrovka building’s Instagram account, which has over 7,000 subscribers today, was joined by accounts for the buildings on Basmannaya, Myasnitskaya and Shabolovka. A student support Telegram channel called ‘Write Not Procrastinate’ was launched alongside a Telegram bot, Academic Matching.

‘Our main goal is to give our subscribers an opportunity to stay in touch with the university anywhere with the most popular tools,’ said Andrey Lavrov, Senior Director for Communications, as he elaborated on the reasons to create the new channels during his talk at Baltic Weekend plenary session.

September 24, 2021