Communication, Culture and Media MA

Course overview

We will develop your abilities to question, critique and make your voice stand out from the crowd on topical debates around feminism, identity in a digital world, global and transnational media events, international media industries, distribution networks, memes and viral campaigns, among others.

• You will have the option to apply for a ‘professional experience’ opportunity², designed to further develop your skills and knowledge with the aim of maximising your employability prospects. See the ‘Modules’ section for more information.

Why you should study this course

• Our theory-into-practice approach blends the study of media and culture with an exciting range of active assignments and real-life projects to develop creative, critical and digital skills of relevance in the professional world.
• We create a supportive and collaborative environment where students and staff work together on important and topical issues. You could find yourself tasked with hosting your own photographic exhibition, arranging professional academic conferences or taking a trip to the capital cities of France, Germany or the Netherlands (subject to availability and additional costs²). Alternatively, you may be invited to collaborate with one of our many professional partners – for example, with companies like ESL Games, who host professional live games tournaments (subject to availability²).
• Study is based in a converted 1930s Art Deco cinema, which offers a range of purpose-designed spaces. We currently have a global creative community with students from several different countries and highly respected staff, who have published internationally recognised research in journals and books (staff may be subject to change).
• Taking full advantage of our extensive networks, we host guest lectures (subject to availability), which in the past have included senior academics from the UK, Finland and Turkey with expertise including media fandom, cult film/TV and audiences in the digital era, the sociology of science and technology, including ethnographic studies of scientific culture, information technology and the internet, on gender, media and the body, and journalistic culture and news production in international news organisations.
• We also provide insight from research being conducted within the university itself, which encourages you to explore disruptive social and open media, creative archiving, immersive, mobile and interactive media. Our staff share their most recent knowledge with you, while our quarterly Media Research Seminars offer you the chance to network with internationally leading scholars (subject to availability).

Careers and opportunities

Upon successful completion, you will be able to:

• demonstrate knowledge of cutting-edge theoretical frameworks, concepts, ideas and ways of understanding the world that help make sense of the complexity of contemporary media
• critically engage and interpret complex bodies of thought, and understand the relationships between and within frameworks for thinking
• evaluate a number of competing and contradictory theories, concepts and ideas and be able to reconcile differences and reason through their own theoretically informed thinking and practices
• produce, make, create and craft a broad range of artefacts (e.g. film production and distribution, conference/seminar/symposium organisation, exhibition, curatorial projects, installations, websites and other digital content) relevant to the context and engage in appropriate and thoughtful methods of advertising and promotion to ensure your work is visible and accessible to a global audience.

We provide a range of exciting opportunities to produce industry-related work and self-directed portfolios that are geared towards creating graduates who could work either in the UK or abroad. Past projects have included ‘JuneParis’, ‘Checkpoint/Counterpoint’ and ‘Rescheduled’, which have presented research through photographic and digital arts, with data produced in Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris².

We focus on developing your creative capacity, enhancing your skills in creating, making and producing, giving you the confidence to respond to the media as it happens with meaningful and academically informed outputs (e.g. digital profiles, exhibitions, artefacts such as film and photography). With these skills, you should be well placed to take up roles in a range of creative sectors, ranging from advocacy and other forms of applied communications, academic research and scholarship, start-ups, arts and particular industries within media sectors (e.g. film, journalism, cultural criticism, television, journalism, digital publishing).