Course description
What will you study?
Core modules offer a comprehensive grounding in the theoretical and empirical approaches to studying media institutions and texts. Alongside these, a wide range of optional modules allows students to specialise within this broad field.
Optional modules include those addressing:
-how the economics of European media have been affected by trends towards the internationalisation and globalisation of markets, the concentration of corporations and technological developments;
-the social factors that have shaped the debates on regulation and censorship in various political and cultural contexts; and the implications of those debates not only in terms of the consumption of media texts, but also in terms of political power;
-the main theoretical debates surrounding the interdisciplinary study of intercultural communication and the wider issues surrounding the complex notions such of culture, communication, identity and otherization;
-the key characteristics that define digital media, as well as the history of ideas surrounding technological advances;
-political communication – through an in-depth examination of government forms of political communication, such as spin, campaigning and censorship; how the media and NGOs, for example, use political communication; and new and/or alternative forms of political communication, such as blogs, citizen journalism and political violence; and
-the structure of ‘New Hollywood’ as a social, cultural and commercial institution.
Course structure
Please note that this is an indicative list of modules and is not intended as a definitive list.
Core modules
-Theories of Media and Communication I
-Theories of Media and Communication II
-Principles of Intercultural Communication
-Researching Media and Communication
Optional modules
-Digitisation of Media
-Digital Media and Urban Cultures
-Media, Policy and International Politics
-Political Communication
-New Hollywood: From the Mainstreams to the Margins
-Case Studies in World Cinema
-Globalisation, Culture and Media*
-Media and its Audiences
-Explorations into Otherness*
-Language as Discourse*
-Questions of Censorship
-Contemporary European Media and Communication Industries
* Modules marked with this symbol have been developed from staff research interests. They are largely seminar-led, with the content continuously updated. Students taking these modules will undertake an extended essay of 6,000 words, plus a practical (and creative) research project. The content of the practical research project can vary from documentaries to the design of web pages.
