BSc (Hons) Digital Journalism

Our students are storytellers for the digital age. They use written copy, photography, video, sound and web design to tell engaging, factual stories that they might dig up in Leeds or search out in Southern California. They are as comfortable designing a social campaign for delivery via Instagram as they are writing a print magazine feature. We develop students’ journalistic abilities, then allow them to decide the right medium and platform for their story. It might be selecting striking images to support compelling copy, or building a media-rich interactive website. Or it could be creating snackable, short-form content to be shared on social media. And yes, sometimes, longform editorial writing is still the best way to tell a complex story.

A broad range of skills and the ability to develop specialisms across their course of study allows students to tell the stories that fascinate them, and that might change the way you see the world, in the form they want to. From next year the course will be offering specialist pathways in Digital Journalism with Photography and with Data Visualistion. Audiences are increasingly demanding, and the tools we can use to tell our stories is constantly evolving. We see visual content and interpreting data as the keys to engaging big audiences with important stories in the years ahead.

This year, Digital Journalism students have produced an eclectic mix of work using web, print, photo and video. Some, like Francesca Tirpak’s striking documentary photography on chosen family in the LGBTQ+ community in California and the UK, is displayed in the Festival. Kate Hathaway’s mixed media Illustrated website, ‘Let’s Talk About Sex Ed’, calls for change in the way sex and relationships education is delivered to young people, whilst Farah Jamal’s ‘Homes of Pages Bound’ is an original publication dedicated to independent bookshops and publishers. These students are using their eye for a strong story and their skills as creative technologists to add depth and complexity to stories that need to grip time-constrained audiences as they scroll through a busy timeline of competing media. A wider selection of their work can be enjoyed by visiting www.vision2020showcase.com, a virtual exhibition that the students developed from scratch after lockdown - when their assessed end of year exhibition could no longer be held in a physical space.

BSc (Hons) Digital Journalism Vision2020 Showreel