MA

Media and Culture

Teaching & Learning

The option modules will comprise a selection from the portfolio of module specifications as listed below.  The option modules that run will depend on student preference and staff availability. We cannot guarantee that every single option will run. Option modules will be discussed with you in detail, and you’ll be provided an option module handbook. You’ll then be asked to state your preference.

What you'll learn

Understand how to practically conduct research. In preparation for your major project, this module will see you critically explore key research methodologies including textual analysis, content analysis, critical discourse analysis, questionnaires, interviews, observation, ethnography and Netenography. You will understand effective strategies for gathering empirical work, understand issues such as ethical dilemmas and researcher bias and how they may be mitigated, and how to analyse data. This module will enhance your study skills such as critical reading, critical writing and presenting.
Study a range of theoretical perspectives on media and culture. You will develop critical thinking skills while you focus on the original work of key theorists whose ideas continue to be significant and relevant today including Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes, Stuart Hall and Walter Benjamin. This module will enable you to develop an extensive knowledge of different theoretical voices in media and cultural studies, and how these voices contribute to debates surrounding the role of media in today?s global society.
Gain real-world industry experience by working with industry professionals. This module will provide a platform for you to apply your theoretical knowledge to produce new, practical and creative content. You will experience how a chosen media/cultural industry operates and undertake a live project having received a brief from an industry professional.
Critically investigate forms of discrimination within a media and cultural context. You will define discriminatory practices such as racism, sexism, homophobia and class issues before exploring the interdisciplinary nature of discrimination. This module will encourage you to understand ways in which discrimination can be challenged within media and cultural industries. Your studies will focus on the works of various anti-discriminatory organisations, campaign groups and industry professionals who are committed to social change.
Consolidate your studies and tailor your learning experience by defining an area of academic investigation, practice or creative exploration. You will be supported by tutors and media professionals while you pursue either a major academic, professional or creative project.
Understand how to practically conduct research. In preparation for your major project, this module will see you critically explore key research methodologies including textual analysis, content analysis, critical discourse analysis, questionnaires, interviews, observation, ethnography and Netenography. You will understand effective strategies for gathering empirical work, understand issues such as ethical dilemmas and researcher bias and how they may be mitigated, and how to analyse data. This module will enhance your study skills such as critical reading, critical writing and presenting.
Study a range of theoretical perspectives on media and culture. You will develop critical thinking skills while you focus on the original work of key theorists whose ideas continue to be significant and relevant today including Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes, Stuart Hall and Walter Benjamin. This module will enable you to develop an extensive knowledge of different theoretical voices in media and cultural studies, and how these voices contribute to debates surrounding the role of media in today?s global society.
Gain real-world industry experience by working with industry professionals. This module will provide a platform for you to apply your theoretical knowledge to produce new, practical and creative content. You will experience how a chosen media/cultural industry operates and undertake a live project having received a brief from an industry professional.
Critically investigate forms of discrimination within a media and cultural context. You will define discriminatory practices such as racism, sexism, homophobia and class issues before exploring the interdisciplinary nature of discrimination. This module will encourage you to understand ways in which discrimination can be challenged within media and cultural industries. Your studies will focus on the works of various anti-discriminatory organisations, campaign groups and industry professionals who are committed to social change.
Consolidate your studies and tailor your learning experience by defining an area of academic investigation, practice or creative exploration. You will be supported by tutors and media professionals while you pursue either a major academic, professional or creative project.

What you'll learn

Explore the relationship artists have cultivated with the media. From international dissident Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, who uses art and social media to inspire global audiences, to US 1970s avant-garde feminist film-maker Martha Rosler, this module will explore how artists use Twitter, television and art-house movie theatres to disseminate challenging cultural and political questions.
Critically explore the ways in which new media technologies have become embedded within the practices of everyday life. Across the module, you will consider how mobile media technologies influence and shape the ways in which we navigate through time and space, and how they have altered our experiences of leisure and pleasure, created new realms to perform fan identities, and the ways in which we produce and consume news content. This module will see you investigate, select and apply key concepts such as technological determinism, post-fandom, the panopticon, Online Disinhibition Effect, and presumption to specific aspects of mobile media culture.
Apply post-war psychosocial thinking to the question of contemporary citizenship. Neoliberal rationalities may be diverse and chaotic but they do depend on the construction of certain `ideal' citizens: this module will ask if happiness and self-control play a role in that construction. You will examine the creation of modern interiority, popular psychology and the role of big pharmacology in order to ask `is optimism cruel?'.
Investigate the relationship between mainstream culture and the reproduction of social inequalities and social injustice. This module will take the monster as its focus in order to introduce some of the ways marginalised people and populations are presented as threats. You will study cultural representations in reality television and factual welfare programming to ask just how fear, hate and disgust are circulated and why.
Explore the connections between a range of cultural contexts that make use of and depend upon music for their structures of meaning. You will study the roles and uses of music in mediating events, places and identity in film, TV, radio and online environments. This module will connect issues and ideas via the common thread of the use of music to mediate meaning.
Explore the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced societies. Through the lens of the hyperreal, this module will focus on fictional works on futuristic and alternative visions of our society, and nonfictional and news media reports about current societal problems. It will tackle the ways in which contemporary fictional and nonfictional narratives inform our realities. You'll identify, simulate, and replicate storytelling techniques found across the spectrum of digital culture and critically think about the interdependence between utopian/dystopian futures and our evaluation of the present. You'll study key themes such as: the relationships between futuristic cityscapes and technology, the environment and social inequalities, and the celebration of digital heroes and 'cancellation' of pariahs.
Explore the relationship artists have cultivated with the media. From international dissident Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, who uses art and social media to inspire global audiences, to US 1970s avant-garde feminist film-maker Martha Rosler, this module will explore how artists use Twitter, television and art-house movie theatres to disseminate challenging cultural and political questions.
Critically explore the ways in which new media technologies have become embedded within the practices of everyday life. Across the module, you will consider how mobile media technologies influence and shape the ways in which we navigate through time and space, and how they have altered our experiences of leisure and pleasure, created new realms to perform fan identities, and the ways in which we produce and consume news content. This module will see you investigate, select and apply key concepts such as technological determinism, post-fandom, the panopticon, Online Disinhibition Effect, and presumption to specific aspects of mobile media culture.
Apply post-war psychosocial thinking to the question of contemporary citizenship. Neoliberal rationalities may be diverse and chaotic but they do depend on the construction of certain `ideal' citizens: this module will ask if happiness and self-control play a role in that construction. You will examine the creation of modern interiority, popular psychology and the role of big pharmacology in order to ask `is optimism cruel?'.
Investigate the relationship between mainstream culture and the reproduction of social inequalities and social injustice. This module will take the monster as its focus in order to introduce some of the ways marginalised people and populations are presented as threats. You will study cultural representations in reality television and factual welfare programming to ask just how fear, hate and disgust are circulated and why.
Explore the connections between a range of cultural contexts that make use of and depend upon music for their structures of meaning. You will study the roles and uses of music in mediating events, places and identity in film, TV, radio and online environments. This module will connect issues and ideas via the common thread of the use of music to mediate meaning.
Explore the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced societies. Through the lens of the hyperreal, this module will focus on fictional works on futuristic and alternative visions of our society, and nonfictional and news media reports about current societal problems. It will tackle the ways in which contemporary fictional and nonfictional narratives inform our realities. You'll identify, simulate, and replicate storytelling techniques found across the spectrum of digital culture and critically think about the interdependence between utopian/dystopian futures and our evaluation of the present. You'll study key themes such as: the relationships between futuristic cityscapes and technology, the environment and social inequalities, and the celebration of digital heroes and 'cancellation' of pariahs.