Course overview

Our Media and Communications course is designed to help you negotiate and operate in contemporary media landscapes, exploring a wide range of communication, culture and media theory.

Narrative content creation is the driving force of any emergent, new, and/or established media form. This course focuses on writing for media and furthers academic practice with a digital humanities toolkit to theoretically engage content, markets, and creative practice.
Get stuck into projects in areas such as: audiovisual media and moving image; podcasts; blogs, and other forms of digital publications, marketing, and publicity design.

What you'll study

The course encourages you to think and work critically, creatively, imaginatively and professionally within a wide range of contemporary media and cultural practices.

Over the course of the three years, you will cover the key areas of: screen, new and digital media, global and international contexts of media and culture, creative industries, media history and theory, media and cultural research, and media and cultural production.

As the course progresses, you will deepen your awareness of the forms and aesthetics of communication, media and culture texts and how these create different effects and meanings. We will explore the pragmatic, cultural and social significance of the emergence of new technological forms of media and communication practice, their heritage, and how these shape the lived experience of everyday domestic and professional life by gaining a combination of analytical, critical and practice-based skills.

Our Media and Communications course is extremely well placed to exploit the rapid shift to forms of employment within the cultural and media industries based around complex, convergent and new digital media developments.

You will be immersed in the driving forces of media exchange (theory) and media content like storytelling (practice). The course focuses on contemporary developments in media and communication studies and the best-suited, most flexible creative practices to enter the creative industries.

Modules

Basic Concepts in Media Studies

Media History – An Introduction

This module introduces you to the history of audio-visual media, from the birth of newspapers to the age of the internet, highlighting some of the key developments and debates concerning the creative and media industries.

Compulsory

Assessment: coursework

Writing Media Narratives

Contemporary Issues in Media – Representation

This module trains students to identify, observe, understand, and analyse issues pertaining to media representation, that is the ability of popular (and other) media content to portray particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas, or topics from a particular ideological or value perspective.

Compulsory

Assessment: coursework

Digital Media – Communities

This module is the first in a three-part series of modules on Digital Media and Digital Humanities which builds an awareness of those that engage with media through reception (fans, audiences, viewers, consumers etc.).The focus of this module is Media Viewers and Communities. Later modules consider systems and networks, before moving into transnational identities shaped by media engagement in its various forms.

Compulsory

Assessment: coursework

Student Creative Project

The workshops enable you to explore the techniques for disciplined writing, self- and peer evaluation, and creative writing tool kits. You will explore the appropriate uses of form, format, and language through genres and medium driven variations of storytelling (fiction, literary nonfiction, transmedia world building, conceptual writing, reimagining, etc.) with emphasis on your own unique style and preferred subject matter.

Compulsory

Assessment: coursework

Research Methodologies

In the second year, your acquired skills and competences are extended into a more structured academic research and a first-person engagement with the professional world. You’ll engage in a series of different activities inspired by both research-informed teaching and employability-oriented projects. Live and simulated projects and assignments are also embedded in the curriculum to introduce you to the demands of operating within the professional sphere of the media and cultural industries.

Modules

Intermediate Concepts in Media Studies

This module builds on and extends the themes, issues and theoretical debates central to the study of media, the mediation of communication, and its relationship with socio-economic systems, as introduced in the first year of study.

Compulsory

Assessment: coursework

Media and Creative Industries

The module aims to enable you to critically and practically advance knowledge and skills, the use of business tools and major themes in Media Management. You will develop leadership, project management and a set of business and vocational skills.

Compulsory

Assessment: coursework

Contemporary Issues in Media – Socio-Political Discourse

This module trains students to identify, observe, understand, and analyse issues pertaining to media representation, that is the ability of popular (and other) media content to portray particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas, or topics from a particular ideological or value perspective.

Compulsory

Assessment: coursework

Digital Media – Systems and Networks

This module builds on and extends the themes, issues and theoretical debates central to the study of media, the mediation of communication, and its relationship with socio-economic systems, as introduced in the first year of study.

Compulsory

Assessment: coursework

Media Industry Event

The module is a combination of student curated event(s) and practice driven workshops leading up to student curated event(s), which explores the opportunity to engage media and creative industries professionals in direct conversation. This provides students the opportunity to develop skills like customer relations, event organisation, branding, advertising, and production, and to foster adaptable approaches towards employment.

Compulsory

Assessment: coursework

Film and Screen Studies

This module is designed as an overview of film and screen studies which provides students with the theoretical background to understand film and visual cultures at large. The classes will focus on the close reading of specific films and screen content – from the dawn of cinema, to the global present – addressing aesthetics, production, and the relationship of to audiences and users at varying levels.

Optional

Assessment: coursework

Technological Change: Issues and Debates

Media Activism and Contemporary Media

This module analyses how social media are used to engage in politics, activism, and other public-debate dimensions. It provides you with the opportunity to acquire, develop, and consolidate a personal portfolio of communication skills ranging from the devising of coherent communication strategies to the implementation of those strategies.

Optional

Assessment: coursework

In the final year, your critical competences and professional skills are developed and extended further through projects in the Critical Concepts modules, where you will pick a total of two of the options available - Concepts and Digital Media - to prepare for your final coursework. You will be given the opportunity to further your analytical and research skills, and finally craft your own, future-oriented dissertation or project.

Modules

Advanced Concepts in Media Studies

Critical Concepts in Depth

This module series allows you to more deeply engage with a single or pre-defined set of concepts and media content related to Media and Communications. The module serves as a foundation on which you should build your final project/dissertation.

Compulsory

Assessment: coursework

Research Design

Digital Media – Transnational Identities

The module examines how the weight of historical and material cultures affects us in our relationship with both the material world and digital spaces and shapes an understanding and definitions of borders, limitations, boundaries etc. Media users, audiences, producers and consumers redefine their understanding of self and their relationship with nation/culture/place and space through the engagement with larger networks and systems.

Compulsory

Assessment: coursework

Final Coursework

The aim of this module is to give you the opportunity to undertake a major piece of research in your elected field of study within the area of media and communications. You will apply theories and concepts acquired during your course towards a substantial project on a topic chosen in consultation with an individual tutor.

Compulsory

Assessment: coursework

We regularly review our course content, to make it relevant and current for the benefit of our students. For these reasons, course modules may be updated.

How you'll learn

At all levels, contact hours are combined with self-guided study. Whilst the former includes lectures, seminars, workshops, and personal and group tutorials, the latter is focused on your personal organisation, giving you the opportunity to develop time management skills and to fully utilise the course resource pack.

Assessment

Given the complexity of the field of media and communications, you will be encouraged and supported to produce various forms of research and creative outcomes, including pieces of academic writing, media artefacts, portfolios, presentations, reflection and creative works. You will acquire regular feedback on your development from tutors, peers, and instructors.

Job ready

On successful completion of the course you will be able to:

Demonstrate critical thinking around the history and development of media and communication forms in local, national, and global contexts.
Analyse the convergence of theory and practice across diverse modes of media and communication landscapes.
Engage in creative production practices utilising the most appropriate media and communications tools to further modes of media storytelling.
Understand the role of changing technology, including emergent digital technologies in media and communications, content manipulation, distribution, access and participation and how to adapt core skills in line with industry requirements.
Demonstrate how media and communication genres inform, disrupt and impact on central areas of content creation, public cultures and socially diverse communities.
Be adaptable and creative when producing content in event organisation and participation for a variety of audiences and in a variety of media and communication contexts.

Entry requirements

Contact PSB Academy

Fees and funding

Student	Full-time	Part-time
International	Contact PSB for fees per year	Not available

Careers and opportunities

The creative media industries account for some of the most exciting and diverse careers available – you could go on to become a producer, technician, presenter, reporter, PR specialist, writer, editor or critic.

Our course places your future career at its core, aiming to prepare you professionally and providing opportunities to gain substantial practical experience so you’re ready to launch a successful career in the media and cultural industries. It is designed to enable you to work for a range of media organisations, which may include the BBC, independent companies, global media organisations, or as a freelance/independent media manager, producer or researcher.

Where our graduates work

Recent graduates of the course have gone on to work within the film industry, advertising, television, radio, communication management and PR, publishing, the arts and creative media and media education for companies including, Apple, Nielsen, Spark 44, WPP, Virgin, EA Sports, Jaguar Land Rover, Linney Group, IKEA Group, KPMG, Selfridges, Reprezent Radio, Citroen and the BBC. Many also go on to pursue Master’s level study.

Further study

You can choose to continue your studies at Coventry University with the Communication, Culture and Media MA.

Media and Communications BA (Hons)

Course overview

What you'll study

Modules

Modules

Modules

How you'll learn

Assessment

Job ready

Entry requirements

Fees and funding

Careers and opportunities

Where our graduates work

Further study