MA Communication, Culture & Technology
Entry requirements
A level: ABB or BBB (Additional requirements: A-level English or another Humanities subject.) IB: 34 (6,5,5) (Additional requirements: English HL6 or Humanities HL6 with English SL6.) Scottish Higher: BBBB is the minimum requirement from S5 to be reviewed for an S6 offer Offers are not guaranteed to applicants who meet the minimum from S5 Typically offers will be made at AAAAB by end of S6. B at Advanced Higher is equivalent to A at Higher Additional requirements: Higher English and a Higher Humanities subject at AA. (AB or BA may be considered). Scottish Higher (widening access): MD20 : BBBB (also other target groups*) MD40 : AABB* Additional requirements: Higher English and a Higher Humanities subject. Successful completion of Top-Up or one of our Summer Schools.
About this course
MA in Communication, Culture & Technology, a communication, culture & technology degree centred on media, technology, and cultural studies. Core topics include Research Methods. The curriculum is delivered through a four-year structure culminating in a senior honours dissertation. The first year introduces communication studies and foundational theoretical lenses through modules such as Contemporary Debates in Communications, Culture & Technology and Approaches to Communication, Culture & Technology. The second year explores material artefacts and symbolic power via Communications Infrastructures and Community, Culture, and Identities. The third year focuses on methodology and practical challenges through Methods and Strategies in Communication Studies, Challenge Lab: Health Inequalities, and Challenge Lab: Migration. The course concludes with the Senior Honours Dissertation, which involves an independent research project conducted with supervisor support.
Modules
- L1A Contemporary Debates in Communications, Culture & Technology This course offers an introduction to Communications Studies, drawing from current news headlines and social, cultural and political media phenomena to begin developing a critical awareness and language around how communications shape our contemporary society.
- L1B Approaches to Communication, Culture & Technology This course offers a survey introduction to foundational theories and lenses for approaching the study of media and communication. We will discuss approaches such as cultural studies, media ecology, critical theory, political economy, feminist, and discursive/post-structural lenses to apply to media and communications texts.
- L2A Communications Infrastructures In this course, communication, culture and media are explored as material and technical artefacts. We enquire how the content and symbols of communications is dependent on infrastructures. The course will critically engage with the ethics and politics of communication technologies as material objects. It will ask questions, such as: Why does it matter how much water AI consumes and where the internet cables that connect the globe run? What politics are in the design of digital technologies? Whose labour and which value chains enable digital culture?
- L2B Community, Culture, and Identities In this course, we engage with the symbolic power of communication, media and technology. We will ask how communications and media technologies structure, support, and hinder identities, cultures and solidarities – intersectionally ranging across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, class, age or generation. We ask questions, such as: How are communicative resources unequally distributed affecting voice and recognition of social groups? How do digital technologies shape global symbolic flows and identities? Which ethical frameworks are relevant to critique representations and mediated identities?
- L3 Methods and Strategies in Communication Studies In this course, you will learn about traditions and practices of methodology and knowledge-production in media and communication studies. You will learn how to conduct qualitative methods, such as discourse analysis or ethnography, as well as reflect on the conceptual grounding of what it means to make truth claims: how reality and experience are constructed, how “data” is relational, and how researcher integrity and positionality matters.
- Challenge Lab: Health Inequalities This course engages the challenge of health inequalities from a communications studies perspective. It is designed as a hands-on, practical and workshop based course where students will work together on projects meant to address challenges within the healthcare ecosystem including health communications and misinformation, emerging health technologies, intersectional disparities in access and level of care, and more. The course is designed around the central question: how can media and communications studies positively impact health outcomes for people in the UK and beyond?
- Challenge Lab: Migration This course engages with challenges and questions around migration and border regimes from a communications perspective. It is designed as a hands-on, practical and workshop based course where students will work together on projects meant to address challenges within global migration, pertaining to new technologies employed for border control and migration management, increasing exclusion and attacks on the rights of migrants and refugees in media and communications ecosystems, or the role of communication technologies in facilitating and experiencing migration. The course is designed around the question: how do global migration and border regimes need to be understood in relation to communication and technology, and what can alternative, more just worlds look like?
- Senior Honours Dissertation This course allows you the opportunity to study a topic in Communication, Culture, and Technology of your own choosing and alongside consultation with a specialist supervisor. You will undertake an extensive and independent research project and will be supported by a suite of training sessions and individual supervision to ensure you have the guidance you need.