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Social Sciences

This programme offers a comprehensive understanding of current developments in digital media and their wider social significance.

Smartphones, social networking, blogging and tweeting, online shopping, communication by email, and the delivery of news, film, music and e-books over the Internet: these are just some of the most striking ways in which the digital is penetrating and transforming contemporary society. This programme focuses on digital culture and the digital economy, critically examining their increasingly central role in contemporary social life.

The programme is delivered by a diverse interdisciplinary team with a strong research profile in, for example, digital culture, media, sociology, anthropology, and communication studies. Students on the programme study relevant theory illustrated with concrete cases, and also receive a training in research methods that prepares them to pursue a dissertation on a specialist subject of their choice within the field.

Assessment

Coursework plus a dissertation of 10,000 words on an agreed topic.

Entry Qualification

Good upper second class honours degree in the social sciences or humanities, but applicants with appropriate professional expertise will also be considered. The degree is designed to appeal to students from a variety of national, cultural and academic backgrounds.

Selection

Decisions about selection are normally made on the basis of applications and references are heavily relied upon, though some students may be interviewed.

Careers and Further Study

The degree is designed to develop specialist understanding of contemporary developments in digital media and culture. This will be relevant to anyone pursuing a professional career in this rapidly growing sector and to those with an interest in these significant social changes. Students will also acquire research skills which will be of value in both media-related and academic careers.

Compulsory Modules

Semester 1

• Digital Cultures
• Digital Futures: explorations in new media
• Production and Reception Analysis

Semester 2

• Digital Economies
• Media Ethnographies
• Dissertation

Optional Modules

A selection of the following options will be available:

• Media and Modernity
• Media and Cultural Industries
• The Politics of Representation
• Popular Music and Modern Times 
• Citizenship and Communications
• Media, Nations and Nationalisms
• Global Communications
• Media and Cultural Work
• Tourism, Culture and Society
• Sex Industries

*Note: Entrance requirements are in addition to the General entrance requirements

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