Activist Media Practice

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

Social movements have historically struggled to get their message reported clearly, accurately and effectively through the lens of mainstream media. This has lead to the rise of alternative media practices and strategies to break through or unsettle the corporate and state-run media systems around the world. In order to challenge hegemonic discourses, activist media seeks to circumvent and dismantle traditional media's communicative strategies either through a disruptive aesthetic or through a reconfigured mode of civic engagement. Whether through radical leaflets, pirate radio, graffiti, protest music, performance art, activist videos, political documentaries, or social media and the internet, today's media landscape has evolved into a range of complex transnational networks that can be activated by independent counter-hegemonic media practices and expressions.

This module asks you to learn about various forms of cultural resistance (through readings, screenings, lectures and discussions) in order to to formulate an effective form of activist media provocation. This piece of activist media may take the form of a video, a website, site-specific performance, series of photographs, media prank, etc. You will also be asked to write a reflective essay that contextualises the finished piece within the conceptual debates of the module.

Advanced Journalism Skills

15 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module will introduce you to the practice and principles of newspaper and magazine design and how to sub-edit and layout pages. You will learn how to re-write and shape reporters' copy for print, broadcast and the internet. You will learn QuarkXpress and how to write snappy headlines. Online subbing and how to write search engine optimised headlines, stand firsts and copy will also be addressed. You will complete a tabloid news page individually and work towards a news day when as a group you will work on a real-life news story and create regularly updated web pages with social media spin-offs and a newspaper front page to deadline. Throughout, you will be encouraged to engage in self-reflective critique of your professional practice.

Global Cinemas

30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

Cinema has always been a global medium, but in recent years its international styles, institutions and cultures have moved to the centre of film culture and scholarship. New waves from Taiwan, Romania, Iran and Argentina have produced some of the most exciting contemporary cinema, and the popularity of these films is linked to broader cultural and political issues around globalisation and its critiques.

This module aims both to examine the forms and cultural contexts of a wide range of post-1945 non-Hollywood films and to provide a critical framework for analysing these films through studying theories of globalisation and world cinema. Key topics may include the development of art cinema, New Waves, Third Cinema, postcolonial and indigenous cinemas; cosmopolitanism; the economics of film festivals; modern film industries; and transnational cinemas. You will study films from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Europe, as well as the flows and relationships between these geopolitical regions and film movements.

Global Journalism B

15 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module sets out to explore the role of journalism in an increasingly deterritorialised media environment and in an era when 'the global' has to inserted as a category of news between 'foreign' and 'domestic' stories. The module will examine information flows and institutional relations in the coverage of global issues such as climate change, the "war on terror", and the global economy. It will also investigate questions of transnational news production, and the extent to which the audiences of global journalism might constitute a putative global public sphere. One aspect of this discussion centres around the ethics of covering stories of 'distant suffering'. The areas outlined above are explored through critical reading, seminar discussion and presentation, and then via the written assessment.

Journalism in Transition

15 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

This module explores the profound transformations affecting the practice and principles of journalism in an era of networked communication. Beginning with a historical overview of the development of journalism as a field, the module goes on to examine the contemporary tensions and possibilities emerging from technological innovation, particularly the pervasiveness, ubiquity and interactivity of media in everyday life and the apparent blurring of conventional divides between producers and consumers. Debates around the rise of online and 'citizen journalism' will be central to the module, engaging with debates about professionalism, changing news values, proliferation of sources and outlets, the rise of the 'blogosphere' and so on. The module takes an interdisciplinary approach. It will look at changing institutions, organisations, practices and texts from the perspectives of sociology, political economy and cultural studies. The areas outlined above are explored through critical reading, seminar discussion and presentation, and then via the written assessment.

Media Audiences

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

On this module you will explore and evaluate the broad tradition of critical research into media audiences which has developed over the past two decades.  You will consider, through an exploration of this tradition, how we should understand the nature of media texts, and in particular how meanings, uses, (dis)pleasures and responses are produced in the complex interactions between audiences and texts, in specific social settings.  This module gives you the chance - and to develop the skills to be able - to carry out a small piece of original audience research. Key methods encountered on the module include interviews, semi-structured focus group discussions, open-ended questionnaires, respondents' letters, and participant observation.

Media Theory and Research

30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

The module offers you the chance to explore at an advanced level a number of principal theories and methods within a cultural studies approach to media studies, and to consider how these shape the ways we might think about and research particular media industries, forms and issues. The theory element aims to introduce you to the key thinkers, traditions and debates in media and cultural studies and contributing disciplines. It investigates media as institutions and systems of representation and explores problems of production and consumption in a variety of social and geo-political contexts. You will be encouraged to prepare informal presentations and to engage in discussion with other members of the seminar group. Each week there will also be a short introduction to the following week’s topic in the lecture given by members of the Media and Film faculty.  The research element aims to develop a systematic and critical understanding of the practical, epistemological and ethical issues involved in conducting different kinds of media and cultural research. It also aims to make you methodologically self-conscious in your own research and written work.

Media, Culture and Communication

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

The module offers you the chance to explore at an advanced level a number of principal theories and methods within a cultural studies approach to media studies, and to consider how these shape the ways we might think about and research particular media industries, forms and issues. The module begins with a focus on questions concerning media production, distribution and consumption. In the latter part of the module, we pay attention to a variety of methodological approaches which draw attention in particular to different ways of conceptualising the relation between the media and concepts like subjectivity, identity, perception and experience.

The theory element aims to introduce you to the key thinkers, traditions and debates in media and cultural studies and contributing disciplines. You will investigate media as institutions and systems of representation and explore problems of production and consumption in a variety of social and geo-political contexts. You will be encouraged to prepare informal presentations and to engage in discussion with other members of the seminar group. Each week there will also be a short introduction to the following week’s topic in the lecture given by members of the Media and Film faculty. The research element aims to develop a systematic and critical understanding of the practical, epistemological and ethical issues involved in conducting different kinds of media and cultural research. It also aims to make you methodologically self-conscious in your own research and written work.

Media, Technology and Everyday Life

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

On this module you will explore historical and contemporary examples of technological innovation within the public and private spaces of the everyday. You will considers major theoretical approaches to the study of media technology and ask how a variety of new media forms – including television, radio, mobile communications, the internet and computers - are socially shaped, re-shaped, and experienced, and how everyday life itself might be theorised and/in relation to media. By the end of the module, you will have developed a critical awareness of your own relationship to media and information technologies, and be able to relate your experience to wider empirical evidence and historical and theoretical perspectives.

New Developments in Digital Media 1b

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module critically surveys developments in the expanding field of new media.  You will explore the dynamics driving digital convergence, viewed as an industrial, political, social, economic and technological process. You will ask what drives convergence between previously discrete industries, technologies, contents, and what limits convergence processes. You will also explore key developments in the field of new media, including phenomena such as social networks, pervasive and locative technologies, new forms of knowledge organisation and gathering. This version of the module is theoretical; seminars explore the areas outlined above through critical reading, seminar discussion and presentation, and you will also write a 5000-word term paper.

News and Feature Writing

15 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

This module equips you with essential knowledge and skills in news research and writing and you will be encouraged to produce news material for a range of platforms. You will also explore key theories surrounding different approaches to news and writing and its key ethical and legal challenges.

The module delivers a foundation in the key principles and techniques of news gathering, news reporting and feature writing. You will proceed from exploring news values, finding story ideas, doing research, identifying and interviewing sources to reporting straight news as well as writing different types of feature stories (e.g. columns, profiles, lifestyle pieces, backgrounders). By the end of the course, you will have gained a solid skill and knowledge base in news and feature writing such as:

- drawing on a range of sources and turning raw information into a publishable news report or feature
- building an effective story structure
- grabbing and maintaining the reader's attention in print and online
- identifying the story angle
- quoting people effectively and accurately, and
- using style and vocabulary appropriate to the genre and context

You will practice all of these via in-class exercises and real-life journalism assignments. You will also obtain a critical understanding of the genres and sub-genres of news and feature and apply this understanding to a critical analysis of existing news products. You will be encouraged and instructed to write publishable content for mainstream news publications.

Photography: Documentary, Landscape, Politics

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module introduces you to a wide range of work in the documentary and landscape genres, both historical and contemporary, but with an emphasis on `conceptual documentary' and contemporary politicised landscape photography. You will also focus on the problematics of documentary and photojournalism, such as ethical issues and questions of efficacy, and the use of text and sound in documentary publications, gallery installations and websites.

The module will be taught through tutor-led discussion in seminars, and regular `group crits' of student work-in-progress in the lab. Early on in the module you will conceive and research your own idea for a photographic project, and start producing images for class viewing. The module will equip you with the necessary production & critical skills to continue working independently on your projects during the Easter vacation before the assessment deadline in early Summer.

Queering Popular Culture

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module offers you the chance to explore lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer contributions to, and perspectives on, the key fields of popular culture, including film, television, the press, popular music, fashion and style. Topics for detailed study will include lesbian representation in mainstream television genres; cinematic homosexualities and their historical context; lesbian and gay 'community television'; contemporary lesbian and gay magazines and newspapers; queer pop from David Bowie to the Pet Shop Boys and beyond; sexuality and style politics; and the pleasures and problematics of camp.

You will investigate issues of representation, consumption and interpretation; unravel debates over stereotyping, subcultures and sensibilities; and ask whether a specifically 'queered' critique of the existing academic discourses used in the study of popular culture is conceptually feasible and/or politically desirable. You can expect to sharpen and deepen your skills in interdisciplinary cultural analysis, and there will be a particular emphasis on a self-reflexive examination of (y)our own popular cultural tastes and practices, exploring the connections and contradictions between theoretical accounts of popular images and forms and our experiential investments in them as consumers located in (or interested in) sexual minorities.

The approach on this module is unrepentantly interdisciplinary - there is no overarching theoretical model to which you will be obliged to subscribe. Students with or without backgrounds in cultural studies will be made equally welcome.