Communication and Cultural Policy MA

What you'll study

You will learn from the most influential thought leaders, pioneering researchers and creative innovators, exposing you to the latest theories and developments from across your discipline.

Modules

Each module will not only develop your knowledge of media, communication and cultural policy, but will also enable you to gain cross-disciplinary experience, giving you the breadth of skills and experience you need to thrive in your chosen career.

• Compulsory
• Optional

Compulsory

Cultural Policy

Cultural Policy

The module covers a broad range of topics relating to cultural policy and their implications for democracy, equality and economy. The module will examine the social and historical contexts for understanding contemporary debates in cultural policy and as such it will include the following topics: approaches to policy making at both the national and global levels; history and theory of cultural policy; cultural policy discourses; commodification and commercialization of culture, changes in cultural institutions, intellectual property, labour; cultural consumption; citizenship.

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of the module, students should be able to:

• Critically evaluate cultural policies utilizing established theoretical approaches
• Appraise the implications of cultural policy making on equality and democracy
• Critically evaluate the different contexts of cultural policy in different regions
• Analyse emerging cultural policy initiatives
• Critique key scholarship in cultural policy
• Demonstrate a depth of critical and analytical thinking in relation to cultural policies.
• Critically evaluate different contexts of cultural policy making and its implications
• Evaluate the academic literature on cultural policy
• Critically assess cultural policy discourses emerging from policy papers

Assessment

100% coursework consisting of:

• 20% Group Presentation
• 80% Essay

Collaborative Project

Collaborative Project

With a multi-talented group of students you will work on a brief from a real company looking to solve a real social or business problem.

Together with your student team, you will research and build solutions to a business problem, supported by our project tutors, clients and staff. Previous clients include Foster + Partners, Speedo, The London Legacy Development Corporation as well as many other companies, start-ups and charities.

The Collaborative Project provides a means for you to engage in critical enquiry and to be exposed to project-based teamwork in multicultural and interdisciplinary settings. By undertaking this module, you will strengthen your cooperative and collaborative working skills and competencies, whilst raising your awareness and appreciation of cultural and disciplinary diversity and differences.

The Collaborative Project aims to provide you with a hands-on experience of identifying, framing and resolving practice-oriented and real-world based challenges and problems, using creativity and appropriate tools to achieve valuable and relevant solutions. Alongside the collaborative elements of the module, you will be provided with opportunities to network with stakeholders, organisations and corporations, which will give you the experience and skills needed to connect to relevant parties and potentially develop future employment opportunities.

Learning outcomes

On completion of this module, you will be able to:

• Work effectively in diverse and interdisciplinary teams
• Undertake and contribute towards a project-based development process
• Apply critical enquiry, reflection, and creative methods to identify, frame, and resolve issues and problems at hand
• Identify user and stakeholder needs and value creation opportunities, whilst collecting and applying evidence-based information and knowledge to develop appropriate insights, practices and solutions
• Identify, structure, reflect on key issues and propose solutions to problems in creative ways
• Enhance your appreciation for diversity and divergent individual and disciplinary perspectives
• Be able to provide structured, reflective and critical feedback to peers and other stakeholders
• Plan and execute a project plan including scope, resources and timing
• Effectively communicate ideas, methods and results to a diverse range of stakeholders
• Use multiple, state-of-the-art date media and technologies to communicate with collaborators
• Make informed, critical and reflective decisions in time-limited situations

Assessment

100% Coursework consisting of:

• 20% Group project proposal
• 20% Individual reflection
• 30% Final Project Report
• 30% Project deliverables to the client

Dissertation

Dissertation

The Dissertation module will equip you with the relevant skills, knowledge and understanding to embark on your own research project.

You will have the choice of three dissertation pathways:

1. A desk based research project that could be set by an organisation or could be a subject of the student's choice
2. A project that involves collection of primary data from within an organisation or based on lab and/or field experiments
3. An Internship within an organisation during which time students will complete a project as part of their role in agreement with the organisation (subject to a suitable placement position being obtained)

By undertaking a dissertation at master's level, you will achieve a high level of understanding in your chosen subject area and will produce a written thesis or project report which will discuss your research in more detail.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this module, you should be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• The importance of project planning;
• The importance of a clear hypothesis or research question;
• The ethical implications of research;
• The relevant empirical data and methodologies for data collection or knowledge assimilation for the subject area;
• Methods of data analysis and their suitability for the intended data;
• The areas of expertise or publications of the major individuals or organisations in the subject or business area;
• The previous research or current knowledge in the specific subject or business area;
• Theoretical perspectives relevant to your chosen topic;
• The most effective methods of presentation for data or knowledge;
• Developing a clear, coherent and original research question, hypothesis or business problem in a suitable subject area;
• Synthesising relevant sources (e.g. research literature, primary data) to construct a coherent argument in response to your research question, hypothesis or business problem;
• Analysing primary or secondary data collected by an appropriate method;
• Critically evaluating data collected in context with previously published knowledge or information;
• Engaging in critical debate and argumentation in written work;
• Applying principles of good scholarly practice to your written work;
• Performing appropriate literature searching/business information searching using library databases or other reputable sources;
• Planning a research project and producing a realistic gantt chart demonstrating your intended timelines;
• Synthesising information from appropriate sources;
• Demonstrating rational use of research method tools;
• Selecting and using appropriate investigative and research skills;
• Demonstrating effective project planning skills;
• Finding and evaluating scholarly sources;
• Engaging in critical reasoning, debate and argumentation;
• Demonstrating effective report writing skills;
• Recognising and using resources effectively;
• Successfully managing a project from idea to completion;
• Demonstrating commercial awareness or the impact of knowledge transfer in a business or research environment

Assesement

100% Coursework consisting of:

• 20% Literature review
• 20% Research proposal
• 60% Dissertation report/essay

Network Information and Communications Policy

Network Information and Communications Policy

The module aims to bring together critical perspectives in the rapidly changing areas of national, regional and transnational policies surrounding information and communication infrastructure. By mapping the contours of emergent global network policies and regulations, you will explore the role of various institutions, shifts in industry, technologies, economic structures, cultural practices and changing geopolitics that shape and reshape today’s information and communications infrastructures. Given the extraterritorial nature of information and communication infrastructures at the heart of conflicts among rival states for political and economic power, and the operation of transnational corporations, policies are studied in the light of political and social struggles to control network infrastructures.

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of the module, students should be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Policy-making processes of network information and communications
• The role of states, institutions, and industries in structuring network infrastructures
• The political and economic context in which policies are constituted and implemented
• The nature of social and political conflict over the control of network infrastructures
• The implications of network information and communications policy for the public
• The role of geopolitics where the US as the world’s dominant information and communication power engages with its emerging oppositional powers in policy-making across the globe from China to India to Latin America to South Africa

Assessment

• Group presentation (20%)
• Essay (80%)

Researching Media Industries

Researching Media Industries

Lectures will include teaching on topics such as:

• Approaches to media and creative industries research
• Standardised questionnaire design
• Methods of sampling
• Document-based research
• Conducting qualitative interviews
• Analysing quantitative data using SPSS
• Analysing qualitative data through thematic analysis
• Developing multi method research strategies

The aim of this module is to familiarise all students with a range of methodologies for the analysis of structure, operation and output of media and cultural industries.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this module, you should be able to:

• Analyse a range of methods applicable to the study of media and creative industries, cultural texts and reception
• Situate particular social, textual and industry research methods in relation to other research practices
• Show through explanation and/or discussion the tensions that divide particular research methods and the benefits that can be derived from their combination
• Evaluate qualitative and quantitative data to appraise their wider analytical value and significance
• Link empirical findings to wider theoretical debates concerning creative industries, media production and reception
• Understand how to collect primary data
• Understand how to analyse data
• Know how to find and evaluate scholarly sources
• Be able to communicate effectively in speech and writing
• Synthesise scholarly and primary sources for use in argument
• Understand the relevance of research to media and creative industries
• Be able to conduct primary research relevant to media and creative industries
• Demonstrate skills in written and verbal communication that are relevant to this field (e.g. report writing)
• Be able to plan, organise and manage a self-directed piece of research, demonstrating independence, initiative and originality

Assessment

• 100% Coursework

Optional

Communication and Politics in North Africa and the Middle East*

Communication and Politics in North Africa and the Middle East*

This module will provide you with a thematic and historical introduction to the emergence and usage of communications infrastructure and the media in North Africa and the Middle East. The main goal is to teach you about critical thought about culture, communications, the media, and politics in contemporary North Africa and the Middle East. The module will expose you to a wide range of technological practices, political struggles over communication lines and communication policies that have emerged in these regions.

North Africa and the Middle East are diverse in terms of ethnicity, religion, language and historical problems, as are their communications and media histories and practices. The module aims to give you a sense of how and why communications technologies (as infrastructures, tools, and social practices) have altered and/or influenced political and social organisations of life for different agents of society across these areas. The module considers the role of communications technologies in relation to the socio-political landscape of the region, by covering a broad range of tools from telegraphy in colonial times to the smart telephony of neo-liberal capitalism.

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of the module, you should be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• The core dynamics of the relationship between communications and politics in North Africa and the Middle East
• The prevailing theoretical and policy-oriented discussions of media and communication technologies in North Africa and the Middle East
• The main concepts and theoretical perspectives for understanding communications and politics in the Global South

Assessment

• Reading report (40%)
• Essay (60%)

Cultural industries and Creative Labour/Cultural Work

Cultural industries and Creative Labour/Cultural Work

The module will cover the definitions of labour and work; theoretical approaches to understanding labour and work; definitions of creative labour and work; the emergence of media and creative work; continuities and changes in media and creative work; comparisons of media and creative work in different industries and in different countries; factors affecting contemporary wages, terms and conditions in the media and creative industries.

The aim of this module is to understand the continuities and changes in work and employment in the media and creative industries internationally.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this module you should be able to:

• Understand the theoretical frameworks for understanding work and labour in media and creative industries
• Understand the definitions of creativity
• Understand the major trends in employment internationally in the media and creative industries
• Understand the continuities and changes in the wages, terms and conditions of those working in media and creative industries
• Identify, debate and evaluate relevant theoretical on media and creative labour and work
• Understand the development of media and creative work historically through applying these frameworks
• Use these frameworks to analyse emerging trends in media and creative work
• Communicate effectively in speech and writing, with academic and non-academic audiences
• Engage in critical reasoning, debate and argumentation
• Assess the empirical validity of competing perspectives
• Manage time and resources effectively
• Synthesise different sources of data and identify key arguments and issues at stake in particular fields of practice
• Understand the behaviour of media and creative workers
• Understand emerging trends in media and creative work
• Apply skills in written and verbal communication that are relevant to this field
• Plan, organise and manage coursework assignments, demonstrating independence, initiative and originality

Assessment

100% Coursework consisting of:

• 30% Report
• 70% Coursework

Global Cities, Media and Communication

Global Cities, Media and Communication

The module content will include teaching on different theories of globalization, global and ordinary cities and place-identity, as well as key themes for urban communication;.These will be explored through specific examples and case studies such as: electronic spaces, place-making, urban regeneration, migrant and ethnic economies, fortress city, cities as texts, representation of cities in different media formats and consumption practices in cities.

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This module explores the relationship between media, communication and the city by focusing on a variety of scenarios and case studies ytical thinking in relation to South Asian media...