Social Media and Political Communication MA

What you'll study

• Compulsory
• Optional

Social Media and Political Communication

Social Media and Political Communication

This core module examines the impact of the internet and social media on political life. You will gain an advanced foundational understanding of cutting-edge scholarly research and debates about social media and political power. The module focuses on a number of important contemporary debates about the role and influence of new communication technologies on the values, processes, and outcomes of: democratic and authoritarian regimes; journalism and news production; representative institutions including political parties and election campaigns; pressure groups and social movements. You will also examine persistent and controversial problems generated by social media, such as privacy and surveillance, the nature of contemporary media systems, the rise of online misinformation, and the balance of power between older and newer media in social and political life. You will have the opportunity to create digital content relevant to the module’s topics.

Data, Power, and Democracy

Data, Power, and Democracy

This module addresses the ways in which social media platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat are changing the ways in which political actors, citizens and journalists interact with each other, advance their goals and exercise power. It will engage with contemporary arguments and debates about the democratic implications of social media by drawing on state-of-the-art theory and research, as well as case studies of relevant contemporary events and controversies. The module will enable students to understand how social media data are used by citizens, political actors, journalists, and platforms themselves to access, distribute and coproduce content that is relevant to public affairs and opportunities for political learning, persuasion, mobilization and engagement. It will use both theory and empirical research to shed light on how social media data are enhancing and hindering citizenship and democratic politics. Students will have the opportunity to design a simulated social media campaign.

Marketing Politics

Marketing Politics

The aim of this module is to put the social media revolution in context by introducing you to the marketing of politics from a contemporary as well as an historical perspective. A major focus is on understanding the increasingly important role of advertising, public relations and market research techniques, approaches and personnel in attempts to win and maintain voter support for candidates vying for public office. This will be achieved through close analysis of developments in countries with some of the most high-profile elections, notably the United States and United Kingdom. Particular consideration will be devoted to the ethical and democratic consequences of the growing use of “packaged politics”.

Key Debates in Social Media and Political Communication

Key Debates in Social Media and Political Communication

This module introduces students to key debates and issues relating to the relationships between social media and political communication. Using current real-world examples drawn from a range of national contexts, and current regulations, reports and guidelines relating to current events, the module will allow students to explore the challenges and problems faced by citizens, political actors and communications professionals in these contexts. The course will be organised around guided student presentations.

Researching Communication: Media Users and Cultural Institutions

Researching Communication: Media Users and Cultural Institutions

The aim of this module is to develop knowledge and understanding of a range of methodologies for the analysis of media users and institutions. The module focuses on how qualitative, quantitative and mixed methodologies are applied, identifying their strengths and shortcomings. An indicative list of topics covered in lectures includes: approaches to social research on media users and cultural institutions; interviews; focus groups; ethnographies; surveys and sampling; questionnaire design; social networks analysis; approaches to mixed methods; analysis of data using Nvivo and SPSS.

Researching Communication: Texts and Digital Platforms

Researching Communication: Texts and Digital Platforms

The module is designed to introduce students to state-of-the-art research methods that are applied for the analysis of media and communication content and output, both on traditional as well as on new, digital platforms. Apart from providing the students with a critical overview and discussion of strengths and weaknesses of these methods, both quantitative and qualitative, the module enables them to explore their practical application in adjacent workshops. The module will cover some of the most commonly used methods and techniques for researching communication, including content analysis, thematic analysis, critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis, sentiment analysis, and social media data analysis.

Dissertation in Social Media and Political Communication

Dissertation in Social Media and Political Communication

This module develops your employability and research skills relevant to conducting an individual research project. With mentoring and individual supervision by an academic, you will undertake a piece of research on a social media and political communication topic of your choice, and pursue this research rigorously and in depth.

Political Psychology

Political Psychology

This module introduces students to key issues and debates in the interdisciplinary field of political psychology. Political psychology explains how psychological processes shape political behaviour and how political events shape our beliefs. You will study the nature and origins of public opinion formation and the cognitive underpinnings of persuasion, prejudice and political engagement in both its positive and negative senses. The module includes topics such as the study of political behaviour; public opinion; collective memory; national identity; the political psychology of extremism, destructive obedience and genocide; social representations of history and politics; and political rhetoric.

Digital Futures: Explorations in New Media

Digital Futures: Explorations in New Media

The aim of this module is to consider contemporary approaches to the economic, social and cultural impact of digital technologies. On completion of the module, you should be able to identify and deploy the major theories and frameworks of inquiry relevant to digital technology; evaluate critically the conceptual and methodological strengths and weaknesses of contending positions; and understand and apply the research methods relevant to the module topics.

Digital Economies

Digital Economies

The internet is playing an increasing role in the lives of people around the globe and in the process is transforming many aspects of the ways in which we interact; yet this is a landscape that is contoured by the structure of the global economic system. This module will examine the variety of roles that are implicated in the creation, delivery, and consumption of cultural/media products over the internet and the symbolic struggles that have occurred over legitimacy in digital culture. For example, we can trace a continuing tension between the growth of the digital market economy and advocacy of the internet as a de-commercialised space. While the primary focus will be on contemporary cases, the module will also seek to relate these back to classic issues in economic sociology.

Global Communication

Global Communication

The aim of the module is for the student to become familiar with the different theoretical perspectives underpinning the study of the media in the international environment. You will identify the structures and processes involved in global communication environment and describe contemporary media developments in this context. You will also be able to discuss and critically evaluate a range of theories and concepts such as cultural imperialism and hybridity, and identify their strengths and shortcomings.

Media and Cultural Industries: Political Economy and Public Policy

Media and Cultural Industries: Political Economy and Public Policy

The aim of the module is to outline the major conceptual and empirical questions raised by work on the political economy of the cultural and media industries and on the sociology and anthropology of cultural and media production. Students will examine the changes that have taken place in the cultural and media industries under the impact of technological change and marketisation since the 1970s and explore the questions these changes raise for public policy.

Digital Cultures

Digital Cultures

This module fosters students' ability to critically analyse current research and advanced scholarship about digital cultures. It familiarises students with major debates, theories and latest studies on issues such as young people and digital media, social networking, identities, communities and relationships and online consumption. An indicative list of topics covered in lectures includes the internet and identity, online communities, mobile media, social networking, digital media and romantic/sexual relations, digital media and consumption.

The Politics of Representation

The Politics of Representation

This module develops critical understanding of current debates and advanced research about the politics of representation and develops skills relevant to the analysis of the involvement of media and cultural forms in social inclusion and exclusion. An indicative list of topics covered on the module includes discourse, power, knowledge; stereotyping and the other; spaces of identity and belonging; nationalism, racism and imperialism; orientalism; migration and the media.

Media and Cultural Work

Media and Cultural Work

This module covers the major conceptual and empirical questions raised by research on media and cultural work. It analyses the changes that have taken place in media and media cultural work under the impact of technological change, marketisation and internationalisation since the 1970s, as well as the extent and nature of inequalities and discrimination in media and cultural work. An indicative list of topics covered in lectures includes the growth in employment in media and cultural industries; the changing character of that employment; the internationalisation of media and cultural labour; the extent and nature of inequalities and discrimination in media and cultural work, for example, on the grounds of gender and ethnicity.