MODULES
Year 1
CORE MODULES
Investigating Media and Communication Industries
This module examines the media and creative industries and explores their organisation and institutional arrangements, their media forms, products and services, work practices and cultures, as well as their convergence, hybridisation and transformation. This is a module about the political and economic organisation ('political economy') of the media with particular reference to western industrial democracies but including study of global media industries and comparative media systems.
This module provides you with a broad understanding of the ways in which different media industries have developed, the way they have been structured, organised and controlled, and the ways they have developed relationships with audiences, users and co-creators. The module focuses on the transformation of media and communication industries and investigates themes of convergence, globalisation and digitalisation of public media.
Methods of theorising the relationship between technology, the media and society are also explored by examining technical innovation in the production, distribution and consumption of various media forms and formats. The management and organisation of media industries is examined, drawing on theories of political economy, cultural economy, and theories and approaches in media studies, business studies, sociology and cultural studies.
The module also examines work practices in the cultural and creative industries and the competencies and behaviours required to work successfully within these. The module provides support for you in work placement/study activities and in presenting and preparing yourselves for your careers. You will complete a Career Development Project, producing a portfolio which may include reporting on an external work placement, a work project based on their own professional practice, or an alternative research project.
Global Media, Communication and Development
Professional Practice and Research Methods (Mental Wealth)
This Mental Wealth module provides you with the academic and professional competencies necessary for successful study at postgraduate level, and particularly for producing a self-initiated final project at Masters level. The module introduces the research project process, the key underlying principles of research design and major methodological approaches that guide research in the fields of media and communication and filmmaking. All this will help you to develop a coherent research design and / or pre-production documentation for your own final project. The research and development process will equip you with a wide range of conceptual, creative and practical skills that will help you in any professional or academic career path you pursue in film, media and communication related fields as well as for those seeking to progress to research at a higher level, for example for a doctorate.
You will be guided in the steps to plan, develop and realise an appropriate, independent research and / or practice-based project under relevant subject-specialist supervision and through a process of drafting and revision, grounded in thorough ongoing preparation in methods of study and conceptual formulation, as dictated by the scope and character of the research undertaken. This Mental Wealth module supports and develops core competencies as outlined in the learning outcomes below.
Final Project
This module is designed to support you in the production of an independent, Masters level written research project or film and media production project. The purpose is to support you in the completion of your final project based on the preparatory work undertaken in MS7*** Professional Practice and Research Methods. The module will consolidate knowledge acquired and skills developed in earlier modules through the execution of a piece of independent and original work The main form of support will be individual supervision, with some group sessions, and with additional technical support, as required.
OPTIONAL MODULES
Quantitative Data Analysis
Media and Marketing Communications
The relationships between media and advertising are changing profoundly as they converge across digital platforms. Once settled relationships are being disrupted as advertising becomes more integrated within media and yet also more decoupled as advertising systems track and address users directly. A multi-layered convergence is underway: a convergence of marketing communications and media across corporate arrangements, production practices and identities, cultural forms, and relationships with users. This module explores the changing relationships between advertising, public relations, media and other environments where promotional communications occur, such as retail, fashion, music, sports and digital outdoor screens.
The module considers changing relationships between brands and communications across media industries and practices and draw on a range of practitioner, industry, academic, regulatory, civil society and critical perspectives. The module brings together knowledge and capabilities to serve those seeking to work in branded content and digital marketing as well as those interested in investigating promotional screen industries, practices and promotional cultures. The module draws on media industries analysis, social and cultural theory, political economy, business, law and a range of contemporary critical and theoretical approaches to marketing communications. It combines practical training with investigation and study of relationships between public relations, marketing communications and media.
The Moving Image
- This module aims to provides you with a range of research methods and skills necessary for undertaking media production-based work as part of your MA degree and be able to function in the media industries environment of the 21st century, with transferable skills and adaptability.
- The module aims to assist and encourage conceptual and technical experimentation and research work which maps the subject matter and the formal strategies to be employed, in the production of innovative source materials.
- The central concept of this module is the relationship between realistic limitations and imaginative innovation: limitation is seen not negatively, but as the dynamic contour of the release of creative energy, enabling artistic and aesthetic invention.
Documentary Cinema
- To provide students at postgraduate level with the opportunity to creatively, innovatively and critically research, devise and complete a documentary project.
- To explore and extend practical skills in the area of documentary production.
- To consolidate the central role of theory/practice through the development of research and materials displaying an evolving and coherent theoretical link between documentary practice and academic enquiry.
- To reflect in a critical and informed way upon the work of documentary practitioners and theorists and to locate their individual practice within prevailing theoretical debates.
Audiovision
- To engage with a range of critical approaches to the analysis of sound in relation to moving image forms and technologies.
- To investigate the specific problematics in the practice of sound design for moving image.
- To examine emergent theoretical perspectives in the philosophy of audio-vision and the perception of sound.
- To develop practical skills and techniques of sound design practice, including notation, planning, reverse scoring and digital sound design.
- To contextualise the evolution of sound design practice and technologies in relation to history of the moving and interactive image.
Sustainability and the Commons
This module will give students the opportunity to gain knowledge on the problematic of environmental and socio-economic sustainability in the contemporary world and explore how collective action in general and the commons in particular are an effective response to these problematics. Students will be encouraged to navigate the theoretical and empirical literature on the commons and reflect on their own experience of community involvement. Students will also be guided in the planning for the final essay and trained in the art of blogging.
