Overview
Building on contemporary and established media theory, contextualizing media history and creative industries, and analysing today’s media environments, consumers, and surrounding debates, our Media and Communications course aims to create an atmosphere that allows you to shape yourself as a media- and creative industries professional.
Equipped to understand the processes behind the scenes of media companies and their impact on individuals and the world at large we also set you up with high quality media suite software, hardware, and production spaces, providing you with the opportunity to learn the basic skills needed to creatively express yourself through media.
This course is designed to put you in a position where you understand and are able to navigate the world of media and communications studies as well as industries, both ever changing with an ever-quicker pace. We aim to deliver content that is timely, mindful of media industry’s development over time, to prepare you for its future. We provide you with the opportunity to understand trends, where they originate, how they are shaped, and are received, which may allow you to set trends.
Using our facilities and industry-standard equipment, you’ll gain hands-on experience of multiple communications channels, in areas such as screen and mobile media, film and video, weblogs, social media, and PR.
Our experienced staff may be able to connect you with industry professionals throughout your time at Coventry University, offering not only an opportunity to meet and engage with potential future clients and employers, but to shape your knowledge of the creative industries as they present themselves in real life.
Why Coventry University?
An award-winning university, we are committed to providing our students with the best possible experience. We continue to invest in both our facilities and our innovative approach to education. Our students benefit from industry-relevant teaching, and resources and support designed to help them succeed. These range from our modern library and computing facilities to dedicated careers advice and our impressive Students’ Union activities.
To ensure an optimised and continual student experience, the university may deliver certain contact hours and assessments via emerging online technologies and methods across all courses.
Global ready
An international outlook, with global opportunitiesEmployability
Career-ready graduates, with the skills to succeedTeaching Excellence
Taught by lecturers who are experts in their fieldCourse essentials
A degree which offers you more, at no extra costRelated Links
Building Redevelopment
We are currently in the process of a major redevelopment of our Faculty of Arts and Humanities buildings. The building will be open to the public as well as students, and will feature an expansive gallery space.
Creative Community Hub
We hope that you are all staying safe in these uncertain times. Creative activities can really help fill the days, while we are spending more time at home and we have some ideas to keep you busy.
Employability
We are at the forefront of delivering enterprise and employability as part of our undergraduate programme and our employability unit co-ordinates the delivery of this for all students.
What our students say...
Studying Media and Communications has introduced me to a range of subjects of the industry, giving me an opportunity to gain professional experience alongside studying. Each module expands my learning and allows me to develop myself as a media expert and produce my own ideas. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Coventry University and I’m looking forward to completing my final year and fulfilling my potential.
Course information
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.
93%
of our students are satisfied by the quality of the course
NSS, 2016
Course specification
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Modules
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.
We are ranked as the 15th best University in the United Kingdom Guardian University Guide 2020
In more detail...
This degree is focused on preparing our graduates to be key players in the contemporary world of digital citizenship, ready to act as both professional producers of and critical consumers of media and cultural products. This course has a distinctive international scope, which will enable you to study, gain professional experience and take part in research projects abroad. You will gain a thorough understanding of contemporary issues facing a wide range of media, cultural and communication industries, exploring key historical developments and a broad range of theoretical approaches.
Responding to the shifting patterns of this fast-paced industry, in particular the widespread use of everyday digital media technologies and rapid growth of social media, you will be encouraged to focus on the emerging areas of screen, social, open and mobile media, alongside the rapidly transforming established media. You’ll also have access to our extensive specialist resources, including video and photography studios, industry-standard software suites, radio studios, specialist IT facilities and our dedicated ‘digital media lab’.
From the outset, we aim to foster your critical thinking, to develop your technical, creative, reflective and analytical abilities, with the aim of giving you a thorough grounding in research, providing basic skills in production and post-production, as well as guiding you through project management experiences, which are essential skills to succeed in this ever-expanding and changing sector.
You’ll be taught by passionate staff that makes the subject interesting by combining cutting-edge academic research and real life experience – according to 96% of students in the latest National Student Survey (NSS) 2016. With current faculty expertise spanning from Film Studies, Media histories and theories to Cross Cultural analysis, they have worked as Journalists, Digital Marketing and PR specialists, and Community Development for local and international organisations.
- High levels of student satisfaction – 93% overall and for the quality of teaching in the National Student Survey (NSS) 2016.
- Meet experts in new media and traditional media with past guest speakers including Jon Snow from Channel 4 News and Johnny Fewings from Universal Pictures. (subject to availability)
- Dedicated and flexible creative learning environments, media spaces and industry-focused studios, featuring The Tank, our purpose built, industry-standard TV studio.
- Opportunity to review our world cinema premieres in association with East Winds Festival, and use social networks, blogs and mobile media to make your views heard around the world.
- Opportunity to study abroad at one of our many international partners, which include Zhejiang University of Media and Communications (ZUMC) in China, Jean Moulin University, Lyon, France, and UCSC Milan in Italy. (subject to availability, application, meeting visa requirements and additional costs)
- Access to high standard professional media equipment via our Media Loan Shop, including prosumer media equipment (i.e. 4K and HD video cameras, DSLR cameras, tripods, audio equipment, lighting – Canon, JVC, Sony).
- All of our students are issued a laptop to be used in line with the 24/7 mobile learning scheme, and pre-loaded with the last suite of industry-standard software Adobe Creative Cloud, Office 365 along with 1TB of cloud storage. (Terms and conditions apply)
- Significant links with a wide variety of employers and media practitioners, such as Phoenix Cinema, Electronic Arts and EA Games, many of whom offer professional experience opportunities in the form of placements (subject to availability, successful application and additional costs may apply).
International partners, include Zhejiang University of Media and Communications (ZUMC) in China, Jean Moulin University, Lyon, France, and UCSC Milan in Italy.
Our main study themes are:
- Media and communication:Introduces you to the importance and use of a number of fundamental concepts within the broad fields of media analysis and production to help the understanding of how meaning within media objects has been produced, consumed and interpreted. These may include: institution, identity, contexts of production, audience, narrative and genre, critical refection. The meaning and significance of these concepts will be explored through a range of methods, including case studies, seminar discussions and individual exercises illustrating their development, conventional use and potential limitations.
- Contemporary theories in media and communications: You will be encouraged to explore the key theoretical paradigms that have shaped and informed the character of contemporary themes, issues and debate within the field of study of culture and media. We look at how particular approaches to the analysis of culture, media and communication, such as Feminism and gender, race and class have emerged and attained saliency historically.
- Critical media methods: You will be taught a range of research skills, including source acquisition, archival searching, close-reading of texts, critical review of published sources, media form interpretation, data/evidence analysis, discussion and argumentation.
- Living in a digital world: You will gain practical experience working with a variety of contemporary digital media and cultural forms, ranging from moving image production, photography, sound and music production to text-based online publications. We will consider how the new forms of ‘prosumption’ involved in the creation and uses of these artefacts affect conventional conceptions of such things as ‘audience’, ‘institutional context’, the political economy of media and concepts such as ideology, meaning and pleasure in a new digital world, ‘playbour’ and ‘prize economics’.
The course normally lasts three years when studied full-time and four to six years part-time. You can start in September or January.
Students successfully completing the first two years of the course can opt to spend a year out between the second and third years on placement or study abroad. Past students have spent a year studying in places as diverse as Turku University in Finland, Universidad de Madrid in Spain, Hochschule der Medien in Stuttgart, Germany, Stenden University of Applied Sciences, Leeuwarden, in the Netherlands, and California State University in Long Beach, America. (Placement and study abroad opportunities are subject to availability, application, meeting visa requirements and additional costs).
Your personal tutor will regularly review and discuss your progress on the course. Much of your development will be through activity-led learning, with an emphasis on live projects, industry briefs, real-world working simulations, experimentation and play. Past students have worked on projects as diverse as social media management for arts organisations, organising Internationally recognised film festivals, producing music videos for upcoming artists and presenting at academic conferences. We’ve also visited Media City Salford, the National Media Museum in Bradford and IKON Gallery in Birmingham.
Our current excellent industry links have enabled us to host an exciting programme of guest speakers covering topics such as public relations, social media and blogging. You will also have the opportunity to take part in industry visits at home and abroad, where you will be able to develop your knowledge and skills through fieldwork and group projects. Among the fields explored by our students are news (First News) and social media (HashtagNow). (industry visits are subject to availability, meeting visa requirements and additional costs)
The course encapsulates our overarching spirit, offering a dynamic, enterprising, engaging and creative set of skills grounded in a strong theoretical background. Looking closely at the world of cultural, media and communication activities, it encourages an in-depth understanding of contemporary media and its patterns, with the aim of developing digital fluency, as well as transferable, adaptable and sustainable knowledge which should be at the forefront of your employability. Relying upon a distinctive approach which embeds real life experience tasks and professional standard technologies in your curriculum, our course aims to foster your critical thinking and insight, providing the chance to combine theory with practice, and aiming to helping to facilitate professional opportunities.
Teaching methods include: lectures, with associated seminars, workshops and practical classes.
This course will be assessed using a variety of methods which will vary depending upon the module. Assessment methods include coursework, tests, essays, research projects, practical project work, group work and presentations/posters.
The Coventry University Group assessment strategy ensures that our courses are fairly assessed and allows us to monitor student progression towards the achieving the intended learning outcomes.
On successful completion, you will have knowledge of:
- The roles of communication, media and cultural systems within their cultural, political, social, economic and technological contexts.
- The modes of representation and systems of learning within the contemporary social world, and the ways these are shaped by issues of gender, race, class, ethnicity, disability, sexuality and nationality.
- The historical and global contexts of media, communication and cultural systems and processes.
- The issues of social and political citizenship, especially in relation to debates involving communication, culture and media.
On successful completion, you will be equipped with the skills to:
- Apply the various processes and practices that combine towards the production, circulation and consumption of media, communication and cultural texts.
- Undertake a variety of forms of research appropriate to different forms of study and analysis and be able critically to reflect on these diverse forms of research.
- Fully understand and critically reflect on the chosen processes of production of media artefacts and products, so to be able to interrogate through the most suitable theoretical and conceptual toolkit the various processes of production of media, cultural texts and artefacts.
- Work in flexible, creative and independent ways, demonstrating self-discipline, self-direction, reflexivity, and time-management.
- Gather, organise and deploy ideas and information in order to formulate arguments cogently and express them effectively in written, oral and creative forms.
- Produce work which shows an effective manipulation of sound, image and/or the written word, demonstrating competences in operational aspects of media production technologies, systems, techniques and professional and academic practices.
In a typical teaching week, you will have around 15 ‘contact’ hours of teaching.
This generally breaks down as:
- Personal tutorial/small group teaching
- Medium group teaching
- Large group teaching
The contact hours may be made up of a combination of face-to-face teaching, individual and group tutorials, and online classes and tutorials.
Our course is designed to reflect the increasingly international context of media and culture; this is reflected strongly in the course curriculum. Modules such as ‘Transcultural Film’ and ‘Living in the Digital World 3’ heavily embed a specific attention to global issues both in terms of approached topics, international seminars and field activities.
Modules such as Placing Popular Culture in your first year and the post-digital set of modules throughout embed a specific attention to global issues in terms of approached topics, international engagement and even student led field activities.
The latter is most visible in our annual field trips. We aim to provide a trip in year one which will be in the UK (subject to availability costs of trip are included within course fees) and an international field trip in either year 2 or 3. (Subject to availability, meeting visa requirements and additional costs) both of which are reviewed annually to ensure the choices are both timely and in response to previous student experiences. Recent fieldtrips have included: Reykjavik, Oslo, Berlin, Aarhus, Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Prague, Geneva and more. Our course field trip projects involve researching real life case studies touching upon a wide range of creative industries, screen and digital media related issues, documenting and reflecting on the research and finally creating both a presentation event as well as a crafting a media artefact.
Field tips are subject to availability, meeting visa requirements and additional costs.
Global ready
Did you know we help more students travel internationally than any other UK university according to data from the experts in higher education data and analysis, HESA?
In 2018/19, we provided a total of 5,469 experiences abroad that lasted at least five days.
Much of this travel is made possible through our Global Leaders Programme, which enables students to prepare for the challenges of the global employment market, as well as strengthening and developing their broader personal and professional skills.
Explore our international experiences1st for
international experiences
Sending more students overseas than any other UK uni 2016/17
5,469
Student experiences
The number of student trips abroad for at least 5 days in 2018/19
12,000
and counting
The number of students we’ve helped travel internationally since 2016
12
global programmes
As well as trips, we offer other opportunities like language courses
What our students say
Studying Media and Communications has introduced me to a range of subjects of the industry, giving me an opportunity to gain professional experience alongside studying. Each module expands my learning and allows me to develop myself as a media expert and produce my own ideas. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Coventry University and I’m looking forward to completing my final year and fulfilling my potential.
Entry Requirements
What our students say...
Studying Media and Communications has introduced me to a range of subjects of the industry, giving me an opportunity to gain professional experience alongside studying. Each module expands my learning and allows me to develop myself as a media expert and produce my own ideas. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Coventry University and I’m looking forward to completing my final year and fulfilling my potential.
Tuition Fees
We pride ourselves on offering competitive tuition fees which we review on an annual basis and offer a wide range of scholarships to support students with their studies. Course fees are calculated on the basis of what it costs to teach each course and we aim for total financial transparency.
For more information, please visit our Finance pages.
Course essentials at no extra cost
We're committed to communicating study costs clearly to make sure you're not faced with having to make any unexpected payments.
This is why our ‘Flying Start’ package provides you with a few course essentials. Your full-time fee for an undergraduate degree will cover the following:
UK field trips
Any mandatory site visits and trips within the United Kingdom.Key material
This can include core textbooks, software and equipment.Laser prints
1,000 A4 sides of black and white laser printing credits per year.Optional year
Pay no tuition fees for optional work placements or study abroad trips.As well as covering UK field trips, key materials and laser print, the fees for this course also include: A mobile technology pack,(www.coventry.ac.uk/media-tech-pack) which enables you to benefit from mobile working and learning with 24/7 access (terms and conditions apply)
The following are additional costs not included in the fees:
- Any optional overseas field trips or visits
- Any additional printing
- Any optional site visits and trips
- Media consumables
EU student fees
EU nationals starting in the 2020/21 academic year remain eligible for the same fees as home students and the same financial support. Financial support comes from Student Finance England, and covers undergraduate and postgraduate study for the duration of their course, providing they meet the residency requirement.
For tuition fee loans
EU nationals starting in the 2020/21 academic year must have resided in the European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland for the three years prior to the start of their course. The purpose of that three year residency should not have been mainly for the purpose of receiving full time education.
For maintenance loans
EU nationals starting in the 2020/21 academic year must have resided in the UK and Islands for the five years prior to the start of their course. The purpose of that five year residency should not have been mainly for the purpose of receiving full time education.
What our students say...
Studying Media and Communications has introduced me to a range of subjects of the industry, giving me an opportunity to gain professional experience alongside studying. Each module expands my learning and allows me to develop myself as a media expert and produce my own ideas. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Coventry University and I’m looking forward to completing my final year and fulfilling my potential.
Career prospects
Graduate Immigration Route visa
Based on current information from the UK Government, international students whose study extends beyond summer 2021 may be eligible for a visa under the UK Government’s Graduate Immigration Route, which will enable students to stay and work, or look for work, in the UK at any skill level for up to two (2) years. Check the most up to date guidance available to check your eligibility and any updates from the UK Government before making an application or enrolment decision.
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.
We take great pride in our outstanding track record of graduate success – with 97% of graduates in work or continuing their studies after six months, DHLE 2016/17, (published 2018). 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.
During your second year, the ‘Professional Experience’ module requires you to source and undertake four weeks of work experience. Past students have worked in PR offices, TV broadcasting and creative production, radio stations and more. The School of Media and Performing Arts has a very long and impressive history of graduates who establish themselves in extremely high profile media and cultural employment, examples of which include: executive producer for many highly prestigious Hollywood films, executive producer for SYCO, director for BBC documentaries, DJs for national radio stations such as BBC Radio 6 and Virgin Radio, planners and creatives for a number prestigious London-based advertising agencies.
The university's Talent Team is on hand to offer tailored career and enterprise support if you wish to gain employment or take advantage of professional practice opportunities within course specific industries. Our dedicated enterprise officers also offer valuable assistance on how to begin as a freelancer/entrepreneur.
Coventry University is committed to preparing you for your future career and aims to give you a competitive edge in the graduate job market. The university's Talent Team provide a wide range of support services to help you plan and prepare for your career.
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.
What our students say
Studying Media and Communications has introduced me to a range of subjects of the industry, giving me an opportunity to gain professional experience alongside studying. Each module expands my learning and allows me to develop myself as a media expert and produce my own ideas. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Coventry University and I’m looking forward to completing my final year and fulfilling my potential.
Disclaimer
By accepting your offer of a place and enrolling with us, a Student Contract will be formed between you and the university. A copy of the 2020/21 Contract can be found here. The Contract details your rights and the obligations you will be bound by during your time as a student and contains the obligations that the university will owe to you. You should read the Contract before you accept an offer of a place and before you enrol at the university.
The tuition fee for the course that is stated on the course webpage and in the prospectus for the first year of study will apply. We will review our tuition fees each year. For UK and EU students, if Parliament permit an increase in tuition fees, we may increase fees for each subsequent year of study in line with any such changes. Note that any increase is expected to be in line with inflation. Following the UK’s exit from the European Union, EU students should be aware that there may be a change to UK laws following the UK’s exit, this may change their student status, their eligibility to study part time, and/or their eligibility for student finance. We will act in accordance with the UK’s laws in force in relation to student tuition fees and finance from time to time.
For International students the tuition fee that is stated on the course webpage and in the prospectus for the first year of study will apply. We will review our tuition fees each year. For international students, we may increase fees for each subsequent year of study but such increases will be no more than 5% above inflation.
