Course summary

For over 25 years this MA has been actively interrogating the way the mediated world works. Discover the many roles of media and communications in your life and identity, across institutions and organisations and into wider cultures and societies through this programme.

• There has never been a more exciting time to study media and communications. The digital age has transformed our experiences from shopping, to chatting to friends, to searching out information, to political activism. Our mediated worlds impact upon the rhythms and rituals of our daily lives changing the way we think about things, the way we create things, even the way we conceive of ourselves.

• We are deeply entangled with media, in all their forms. One of our core concerns on this Masters is to work out what role the media play in the ways we live together – to provide a critical appraisal of our mediated existences. What does it mean to live in a digital age?

• Challenging assumptions is at the core of this course. We want rich, complex answers formed through theoretical and empirical work. To get to these we ask demanding questions. What happens to personal relationships in digital media environments? How do people affected by disasters use social media and other media to recover? How do the media influence our lives as citizens and our own (as well as others) political decisions? What should be the future of public service broadcasting? Do social media enable new forms of protest and political action?

• Together we look at these kinds of issues to establish how the media are implicated in different aspects of life and the way the world functions.

• We encourage you to look at issues holistically. Alongside lectures and seminars we run workshops, screenings and cultural trips to encourage you to explore the role of the media in our lives as widely as possible – from the individual and organisational level to corporations, the state, and the market across both the public and private sectors.

• This is a theory-driven MA, but you also have the opportunity to do a practice option in a range of areas including Journalism, Campaigns and Design, and the Screen School. Plus you get the chance to apply your knowledge to a subject that ignites your interest and do your own independent research as part of your dissertation. From how people mediate the self through body piercing to how we form intimate relationships through social media, your dissertation topic is entirely up to you.

• Every year we’re changing the content to relate to existing issues so we’ll always be working on what’s current. We take a collaborative approach, bringing in many different intellectual ideas and calling upon a whole range of ways of thinking which have been traditionally compartmentalised.

• The Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies has been ranked 2nd in the UK for 'world-leading or internationally excellent' research (Research Excellence Framework, 2021) and 12th in the world (2nd in the UK) in the 2022 QS World Rankings for communication and media studies.