BA (Hons) Media & Communications

What you'll study Overview

The degree consists of 50% media theory and 50% media practice. We aim to provide an inspirational learning experience in which theory and practice influence and enrich each other in the production of original creative and intellectual work.

Far more than just a media degree this programme incorporates philosophical perspectives on technology and human life as well as sociological approaches to media production.

We look at issues of identity through critical race studies, queer theory and critiques of post-feminism. We investigate global screen cultures and also the role of news in democracy. All of this, together with critical, creative practice in production equips our students to be the thinking media practitioners of the future.

Year 1 (credit level 4)

Media Theory

In the first year, the theory element introduces you to the study of verbal and visual languages, and encourages you to assess changes in the media. You'll be acquainted with debates surrounding the term 'culture', and will look at how experiences of gender, age and race affect our understanding of the concept. You'll also examine various media texts, and take a module that will address theories of society and approaches to the modern state as they relate to media.

You take the following compulsory 15 credit compulsory modules:

Year 1 Media Theory modules Module title Credits. Media History and Politics Media History and Politics 15 credits

In this module you will study the historical development of the British media, and their role in the development of modern Britain. You will focus on the way in which power is concentrated and organised around media ownership and production.

15 credits. Culture and Cultural Studies Culture and Cultural Studies 15 credits

Introduction to debates around the term ‘culture’, including questions of ‘high’ and ‘mass’ culture, and the development of British cultural studies.

15 credits. Key Debates in Media Studies Key Debates in Media Studies 15 credits

This module focuses on important debates concerning media power and mediated identity, and examines the different traditions and disciplines that have contributed to media analysis in this area. It looks at the roles played by ideology, politics and audiences in the making of meaning, and requires you to take a critical perspective in the analysis of specific media texts and media events.

15 credits. Film and the Audiovisual Film and the Audiovisual 15 credits

This module serves as an introduction into the theorising and analysis of film and other audiovisual media.

15 credits. Media Arts Media Arts 15 credits

The module starts by looking at some of the different ways in which artists have used media and technology across different historical periods. Through this, we introduce aesthetic concerns to the study of media, raising questions about cultural appreciation, value and taste, but also about social and political issues concerning art. You will learn to be critical towards many forms of media art – both old and new. The notion of ‘art’ as a unified field of specialist cultural production is then put into question in the context of the wider discussions of creativity and amateur media practices. By studying contemporary forms of media production via social media, open web, etc., we consider whether, in the age of online media and cheap digital technology, everyone is potentially an artist. Blurring the boundary between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, the module attempts to get you to 'think about media' and 'make media' as part of the same classroom experience and module assignment.

15 credits.

Media Practice

Compulsory media practice modules include an introduction to five of the media practices on offer , and your first media production option, in which you’ll work on a small-scale project.

Year 2 (credit level 5)

Media Theory

In the second year you take theory modules covering a range of approaches to the study of communications and the media. You'll look at theories of postmodernity, identity and globalisation; be introduced to differing psychological perspectives on the analysis of culture and communications; consider cultural theory; and investigate concepts of audience.

You take the following core modules:

Year 2 core modules Module title Credits. Psychology, Subjectivity and Power Psychology, Subjectivity and Power 15 credits

This module examines the place of ‘experience’ in thinking about our self-formation. It extends the usefulness of the concept of subjectivity for exploring certain themes and issues. These might include: personality and the rise of celebrity culture, the psychologisation of everyday life, emotional branding and promotional culture, mental health and the media, make-over culture, and how to begin to understand the complex relationships between sexuality, class, race and gender in relation to the performative force of communication practices such as magazines, film and television.

15 credits. Media, Modernity and Social Thought Media, Modernity and Social Thought 15 credits

Investigates central issues in social theory as they relate to questions of media, communication and culture. The module provides a theoretical map on which to locate some of the key issues confronted in media, communication and cultural studies. Each session addresses a specific cultural or media-related phenomenon that is connected to the sociological topic under discussion. We therefore investigate a range of issues, including ‘McDonaldisation’, branding, reality television, contemporary music, celebrity and spectacle, and the formation of the nation state.

15 credits.

And a choice of two 15 credit option modules. Options offered recently have included:

Year 2 option modules Module title Credits. Culture, Society and the Individual Culture, Society and the Individual 15 credits

This module focuses on the formation of subjectivity in the context of huge social and political change and the growth of individualisation. In particular it examines the consequences of individualisation: what kind of ‘subjects’ are we now becoming? How does the ethos of individualisation operate in the context of globalisation? What does the term ‘precarious lives’ mean? What are the unequal consequences of individualisation for women, for young people, for ethnic minorities? Who are the winners and the losers of the ‘network society’? The module moves between sociology and cultural and media studies, providing plenty of opportunity to examine case studies in more depth and to engage with new research in these areas.

15 credits. Moving Image and Spectatorship Moving Image and Spectatorship 15 credits

This module looks at the dispersal of moving images and screen technologies in contemporary visual culture and considers what impact this has on our conceptions of spectatorship. The first section of the course provides a foundation in canonical theories of moving image spectatorship, from psychoanalytic and phenomenological constructions of the cinema spectator to historically grounded approaches to viewing conditions and cinema publics. In the second half, the course relates these theories of spectatorship to contemporary conditions for viewing moving images. Students will focus on current screen technologies for circulation and display of moving image, in conjunction with key sites, spaces and institutions in order to reflect on how new screen dynamics and conditions of encounter with the moving image are reshaping our understanding of spectatorship.

15 credits. Money and the Media Money and the Media 15 credits

This module asks you to think about the ways in which different forms of communication shape our experiences of the economy. How do the media influence our understanding of wealth, poverty, and inequality? How is economic news reported, and why is it often difficult to understand? How might phenomena such as digital currencies and online auctions change our economic behaviour? How do financial advice columns shape our understanding of the ‘good life’? You will explore the role of media and communication in economic life through a range of theoretical approaches and case studies. It encourages you to think about the economy as a mediated phenomenon – something that is represented in the news, in culture and in everyday life in a variety of ways – and as a set of concepts and ideas (‘markets’, ‘value’, ‘worth’) that shape the way we understand the world.

15 credits. Media, Memory and Conflict Media, Memory and Conflict 15 credits

This module encourages you to reflect on how the media influences collective and individual memories of war and social conflict. Media representations of military conflicts, social movements and popular struggles play a significant part in the way these events are subsequently remembered and commemorated. Media interpretations are also significant in terms of psychological affect and emotional responses to violence and upheaval. The module will equip you with the skills to understand the relationship between symbolic, mediated aspects of violence and conflict and the underlying social, political and economic processes which may be lost in the process of remembering. The module will provide you with skills to analyse visual and textual representations of war and social conflict in a variety of media material including newspapers, feature and documentary film, archive newsreels and photographs and digital sources. You will explore a number of case studies including the First World War, decolonisation and empire, civil rights in the US, genocide and peacekeeping, class and industrial conflict, gender and feminist struggles, the ‘war on terror’.

15 credits.

Media Practice

Practice modules introduce you to media production in a different area to the one you studied in year one. You'll apply production skills in the creation of small-scale projects, and develop critical skills through the analysis of examples and of work produced in each area. You then choose a practice area in which to specialise.

You take:

Module title Credits. Media Production Option 2 Media Production Option 2 30 credits

An introduction to media production in a different area to the one you studied in the second year. You apply production skills in the creation of small-scale projects, and develop critical skills through the analysis of examples and of work produced in each area.

30 credits. Year 3 (credit level 6)

Media Theory

You can choose any combination of options or dissertation to the value of 60 credits. Options offered recently have included:

Year 3 option modules Module title Credits. Structure of Contemporary Political Communication Structure of Contemporary Political Communication 15 credits

This module examines contemporary political communication through the mass media, in its national and international contexts. Lectures explore the history of political communication, looking at questions of media ownership and regulation, party political and election broadcasts, news bias and the agenda-setting role of the media. These issues are illustrated by examples from the British, American and international political systems. Themes covered include:

• public opinion and the public sphere
• controlling and managing news agendas
• political marketing
• spin, propaganda and persuasion
• war and the media
• celebrity politics and e-democracy
15 credits. Race, Empire and Nation Race, Empire and Nation 15 credits

This module will examine how histories of Western imperialism have shaped the landscapes of the present. Our task is to explore how contemporary racial and national formations (ideas about ‘Britishness’, ‘whiteness’, and so on) exist in a complex and intimate relationship to longer histories of empire.

In addition to introducing key concepts from critical race and postcolonial studies, lectures will also offer phenomenological interpretations of how race structures the present often by receding into the background, as well as drawing on theories of affect and emotion to explore how security regimes become racial regimes.

Our concern is with how histories of empire ‘get under the skin,’ and set reading include works that reflect on the experience of being or becoming strangers, or ‘bodies out of place.’ We attend to the intersection between race, gender and sexuality throughout.

15 credits. The City and Consumer Culture The City and Consumer Culture 15 credits

This module draws on critical perspectives from media and cultural studies, sociology, urban studies and gender studies to examine dynamics of space and power, regulation, constraint and conflict in the contemporary urban environment. Among others, the module will draw on the writing of Richard Sennett (from his Fall of Public Man to the more recent Corrosion of Character ), Saskia Sassen (The Global City ) Pierre Bourdieu (The Weight of the World ) Foucault (History of Sexuality , Discipline and Punish ) and Castells (Network Society ). It will also make use of anthropological and ethnographic studies of everyday life (De Certeau) on gang culture (Bourgeois, Loic Wacquand) and it will reflect on the production of urban narratives and city biographies through literary, filmic, musical and visual culture (Irvine Welsh, Helen Walsh, James Kelman, Roberto Saviano [Gomorrah ], Wim Wenders, Ulrike Ottinger, Pedro Almodovar, Jamaica Kincaid).

The module will also focus on social marginalisation, dispossession and poverty, migration to the global city, and sexuality in the city.

15 credits. Music as Communication and Creative Practice Music as Communication and Creative Practice 15 credits

How can sound – as distinct from images, code and text - be used to understand society, culture and technology? What can music tell us about the non-representational qualities of the communication process? How can the auditory be used as a critique of the conventions of visual dominance and visual culture? What does music have to say about our experience of the world and our creativity?

This module explores how musical meanings are conveyed and understood and how this is mediated through the cultures and technologies of production, recording and consumption. We will consider how music communicates mood and meaning, not only through associated imagery and the lyrical content of songs, but as sound itself. How for example do we recognise that music means love, anger, sadness, terror, or patriotism? We will also think about the processes that link production, circulation and consumption, as well as explore the ways that music connects with individual and collective identities.

15 credits. Embodiment and Experience Embodiment and Experience 15 credits

What does it mean to be embodied and to have a body? Given we are so entangled with media is there such a thing as a natural body? Do bodies begin and end at the skin or rather should bodies be considered entangled processes (symbolic, technical, biological, psychological, historical)? What does it mean to bring the body into media and cultural theory and what are some of the exciting challenges that wait for us?

This module will consider these questions by drawing from a variety of perspectives that have attempted to theorise somatic forms of knowing, embodied dispositions and habits, and the role media play in augmenting, modulating, extending and amplifying feelings, emotions, sensations, intensities, atmospheres, contagions and presence. The module will draw from an exciting interdisciplinary field of body studies, which crosses the arts, sciences and cultural theory. The theories and concepts we consider will allow us to consider all the ways in which media touch our lives in registers that exceed rational, conscious experience. The module explores this field in the context of a variety of media (film, gaming, social media) but also takes the student into more unconventional fields to consider these issues: body image and body-without-an-image, affect studies, narratives of health and illness, human/animal communication, mental health and the media (including eating disorders and the phenomena of voice hearing), technologies of suggestion and attention, and the challenges that gender queer bodies make to theories of mediation.


As part of the module the student is invited to consider an aspect of their own embodied experience as a topic and resource in order to reflect on the theoretical issues at stake.

15 credits. Strategies in World Cinema Strategies in World Cinema 15 credits

This module examines a selection of films generally understood as examples of “world cinema”. It analyses the critical and conceptual approaches which have come to define the academic study of national and international film cultures, specifically ideas of “third” and “third world” cinema, and theories of regional and transnational cultures of production and reception.

Divided into three sections, the module will address a body of movies from Africa, Latin America and Asia that have been