Course summary

Birkbeck's MSc Political Communication provides you with advanced training in critical perspectives on a broad range of issues in political communication, including campaign and media effects, misinformation, comparative media systems and civic technologies. Political communication is a central feature of the electoral and policymaking process and concerns the flow of information among:

• politicians

• public institutions

• the media

• the public.

• Our MSc Political Communication offers graduates and practitioners in adjacent fields (media, government) a meaningful opportunity to engage with current research in pursuit of their professional aims and to strengthen their communication and strategies.

• Birkbeck is a world-renowned centre of original, influential research in politics. We organise a lively programme of seminars and conferences and are home to affiliated research centres, such as the Birkbeck Centre for British Political Life, which run seminars, conferences and other events where some of the world's best scholars present their latest research.

• Our academic staff are international authorities in their respective fields, publishing and delivering stimulating teaching in a wide range of political topics including civil society and the state, public policy, development, gender, international security and terrorism, and social and political theory, among others.

• Our location in central London puts us at the heart of the UK’s political life and at the centre of academic London. You can walk down to Parliament and Whitehall, while Bloomsbury contains some of the world’s most famous libraries and centres of research. Our departmental building was once a key location for members of the Bloomsbury Group, so you could be studying in rooms that have hosted distinguished visitors, including T.S. Eliot, George Bernard Shaw and Maynard Keynes.

• You can take advantage of the rich research collections nearby, including Senate House Library, which is right next door to Birkbeck, the British Library, which is five minutes’ walk away, and the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics, which is walkable from Birkbeck. Birkbeck Library has a large politics collection, including the major specialist journals, and provides you with access to an extensive range of online materials.

• central and local government offices

• campaign groups and think thanks

• local community groups and charities running publicity activities

• media and research.