Media and Communications MSc

Course

In Uxbridge

Price on request

Description

  • Type

    Course

  • Location

    Uxbridge

  • Duration

    1 Year

  • Start date

    September

About the Course This well-established postgraduate course is taught as an intensive year-long programme and offers students an interdisciplinary approach to the study of new media and communications practices. It aims to explore: How does the

Facilities

Location

Start date

Uxbridge (Middlesex)
See map
Kingston Lane, UB8 3PH

Start date

SeptemberEnrolment now open

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Subjects

  • Ethics
  • Writing
  • Advertising
  • Social Media
  • Production
  • Internet
  • Web
  • Communications
  • Media
  • New Media

Course programme

Course Content

The MSc consists of both compulsory and optional modules, a typical selection can be found below. Modules can vary from year to year, but these offer a good idea of what we teach.

Compulsory modules

Dissertation in Media and Communications

You complete a dissertation of approximately 15,000 words over the summer period in consultation with a supervisor. You are encouraged to conduct primary research in an area relevant to the course in preparation for the dissertation.

Issues and Controversies in Media and Communications

Main topics of study: media ethics, media and moral panics, media power, media effects.

Qualitative Methods in Social and Cultural Research

Main topics of study: conceptual and practical issues in qualitative research designinterview researchresearch in and on the Internetmedia analysis: research in practiceapproaches to qualitative data analysisplanning and writing a dissertation.

Making Web Cultures

Making Web Cultures explores the development of internet communications, including social media and networks, the impact of online sharing and collaboration, and the challenges of surveillance and privacy.

The Creative Industries

This module explores the significance of creative industries and how they operate in various spheres of social life. The module focuses on how the notion of ‘creativity’ has emerged in the economy and society, its ideological significance, and the positive and negative consequences it has brought for society.

Particular topics addressed are the rise of the creative class, the symbolic economy, immaterial labour, gentrification of cities, and advertising and branding.

Media Audiences

Main topics of study: theoretical approaches to media audiences, gender and genre: cross-national and 'subversive' audiencesdomestic technologiesmedia power and 'minority' readingsmedia production and audiencestelevision audiences and contemporary public issues (news and politics, health and illness, sexual violence)media effects/ influence debates'active' audience theory.

Principles of Media Research

Main topics include introducing and designing focus group studiesusing critical discourse analysisconducting research interviewsmedia content analysis and research ethics and safety.

Media, Body and Society

Main topics include early theories of the mediated bodymodernity and the body: postmodernity, deconstruction and media bodiessuperheroes, steroids and ‘masculine’ mediabeauty, eating and ‘feminine’ medialaughter, ridicule and the body‘race’, ethnicity and sport‘deformity’, medicine and mediaembodying mental illnessrepresenting disabilityzombies, consciousness and social death

Read more about the .

Typical Dissertations

Examples of recent student dissertations include:

  • 'How is authority established in virtual communities?'
  • 'TV Consumption, Identity and Lifestyle: A study of the Chinese Community in Los Angeles'
  • 'The construction of femininity in Sex and the City'
  • 'Media bias and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict'
  • 'Constructing a female cyberspace? A case study of Chinese women and the web'
  • 'Ethnography of a newsroom in Ghana'
  • 'New media and news gathering'.

Additional information

Special Features

  • This postgraduate course is taught by leading academics in Sociology and Communications. Throughout our research we aim to tackle core theoretical questions and also engage with the international community and relevant groups of practitioners in industry, government and the wider public.
  • Where possible we invite professionals who are working in the media and broadcast industry (advertising and marketingtelevision documentary and different PR organisations) to come and talk to our MSc students and offer careers advice. We have also organised a field trip to BBC Television Centre in West London. Students are invited to our academic research seminar programme and to attend our social events.
  • We offer additional bespoke workshops and lectures to enhance students' employability skills, including ‘pitching yourself to employers’.
  • All students can benefit from our programme of workshops and informal ‘drop in’ sessions on information literacy to enhance academic writing skills.

Facts and Figures

Recent res

Media and Communications MSc

Price on request