Media Practice for Development and Social Change (2013 entry)

MA, 1 year full time/2 years part time

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Subject overview

The innovative MA in Media Practice for Development and Social Change brings together the expertise of two of Sussex’s leading areas of research and study – media practice in the Department of Media and Film and development studies within the School of Global Studies.

In the Department of Media and Film at Sussex:

  • we offer exceptional opportunities for graduate study, with innovative taught MA degrees and a range of supervision for MPhil and PhD research in theory and practice
  • we have a thriving research culture in media theory and practice, with around 50 research students working alongside faculty each year
  • we are rated joint 8th in the UK for research in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). 100 percent of our research was rated as recognised internationally
  • we are ranked in the top 10 places to study in the UK in The Complete University Guide 2012-13, The Times Good University Guide 2013 and the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2012, and in the top 15 in the UK in The Guardian University Guide 2013 and The Sunday Times University Guide 2012
  • we offer opportunities to make practical creative projects alongside conceptual and theoretical study
  • we have dedicated state-of-the-art digital production facilities and links to the thriving creative and media scene in Brighton

Global Studies is a unique interdisciplinary school, where you benefit from:

  • cutting-edge research on development and high-profile research centres linking development to other global issues such as migration, human rights and security
  • international faculty with expertise in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, with a critical and engaged approach to development, combining academic analysis and policy expertise
  • a distinctive programme of guest lectures, research seminars and other events, covering a range of global political and development-related issues
  • access to research placements with partner organisations around the world and our worldwide alumni base.

Programme outline

  • Are you interested in documenting and exploring social change?
  • Do you want to investigate how media can contribute to social change and development?
  • Do you want to acquire practical documentary and digital media skills relevant to a career in international development?
  • Are you are media practitioner seeking to deepen your understanding of development, civil society, and social transformation?

Recent experiences in the Middle East have demonstrated the power of social media around the world. Communications technologies can be used for a diversity of purposes and forms of participation – from equipping people with more vivid and diverse forms of information about issues of concern to providing interactive forums through which citizens can communicate and ensure representation in the context of processes of democratisation and social action. This innovative MA brings together the expertise of two of Sussex’s leading areas of research and study – media practice and development studies in the School of Media, Film and Music and the School of Global Studies – for those who are interested not only in media and their role in relation to development processes and social action, but media as a tool for social change.

This degree, unique in the UK, equips you with practical skills in mobile media, radio, documentary and/or photography and interactive media and gives you a critical foundation in development and media theory. You will consider questions such as:

  • How do ownership and media regulation connect to development processes?
  • How do social movements and other civil society organisations use media to strengthen their influence and impact?
  • In what ways can media support processes of democratisation and social change?

This MA offers a forum for critical debates on development and social change and analysis of the contemporary global media landscape. It includes a practical project and culminates in a professional placement, an independent media project engaging with real-world issues, or a written dissertation.

You will:

  • gain an understanding of how different media can and have been used in processes of social change
  • experience practical applications and creative projects that will help you use media for change
  • work in a lively, creative environment in which you can learn from your fellow students, exchange ideas and skills, build on existing professional experience and acquire new skills, insights and impetus.

This MA may appeal to you if you already work for an NGO or are employed in the voluntary sector, or have other work commitments, as the two-year part-time study option has been designed to enable you to complete the course while being on campus on only one day per week.

Also refer to Department of Media and Film: MA preparatory reading.

We continue to develop and update our modules for 2013 entry to ensure you have the best student experience. In addition to the course structure below, you may find it helpful to refer to the 2012 modules tab.

You take two core modules in the autumn term and two options in the spring term. 

Autumn term: Critical Approaches to Development and Social Change • Producing Media for Development and Social Change. 

Spring term: you choose two options from a list of options recommended by the School of Media, Film and Music and the School of Global Studies. These may include Activism for Development and Social Justice • Activist Media Practice • Globalisation and Rural Change • Global Journalism • Knowledge, Power and Resistance • New Developments in Digital Media • New Moving Screens • Photography: Documentary, Landscape, Politics • Poverty, Marginality and Everyday Lives • The Architecture of Aid. 

Summer term: you begin either a placement with a social movement, civil society organisation or international development organisation and produce a media project in the field together with a critical reflection report, or execute an independent media project together with a critical reflection report, or write a desk-based 18,000-word dissertation. 

Assessment

Assessment consists of a variety of practical media projects, critical reflection reports, presentations, essays and the final project in the form you have chosen: work placement, independent media project, or written dissertation. 

Back to module list

Activism for Development and Social Justice

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module addresses the ways in which activists and activism have sought to engage in development and social justice. You will explore and evaluate different approaches to activism, grounding this in theories of social mobilization and citizenship, and will work through a series of practical examples to explore how activism has been used to address issues of development and social justice. In doing so you'll develop your knowledge of theories of social change and approaches to development and social justice, exploring how different kinds of activisms seek to bring about change.

The module explores the contributions that imaginative, insurgent, disruptive and chaotic forms of social action have to make to development, and covers a range of forms of collective action from the use of petitions and lobbying of representatives, to the use of the arts in "interrupting" everyday life to bring some of its elements into question, to mobilisation for protests and peaceful demonstrations, to non-violent direct action and info-activism.

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.

Critical Perspectives on Development, Media and Social Change

30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

This new core module will explore the intersections of development, media and social change. It will begin with an overview of contemporary development challenges, as set against a backdrop of changing trends and understandings of development. It will go on to explore the ways in which media has been used as a tool to bring about social, political and economic change, examining different approaches to and understandings of change - from a conception of development as planned intervention carried out by states and development agencies through policies, projects and programmes to development as organised efforts by groups who have been marginalised from the development process through protest, resistance and mobilisation. The module will draw on examples from practice to examine and critically assess the contributions that media - documentary film, digital storytelling, photography, radio and internet based media, including blogging and social networking - can make to development and social change.

Global Journalism A

30 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.

New Developments in Digital Media 1a

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module critically surveys developments in the expanding field of new media and explores the dynamics driving digital convergence, which is viewed as an industrial, political, social, economic and technological process. You will consider what drives convergence between previously discrete industries, technologies, and contents, and what limits convergence processes. You will explore key developments in the field of new media, including phenomena such as social networks, pervasive and locative technologies, new forms of knowledge organization and gathering.

The module is both theoretical and practical, with seminars exploring the areas outlined above through critical reading, while a series of workshops provide you with an understanding of core technologies underlying contemporary developments, and help you gain literacy in approaches to content development in this field.

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.

Poverty, Marginality and Everyday Lives

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module examines the processes of impoverishment and marginalisation of children, youth and adults in development contexts. A principle focus in on what anthropology can tell us about processes of impoverishment and marginality in development contexts – a complex and highly contextual field. By considering detailed ethnographic accounts of peoples’ everyday lives, you will also interrogate how local preferences, priorities and values can be incorporated into development policy. Throughout the module you will explore these topics with reference to the development policies and practices that have been aimed at `the poor’, as well as the wider political economies of economic transformation in the contemporary world. Focussing upon local contexts, a central premise is that people’s everyday experiences of poverty and marginality have to be situated historically, as well as in terms of the micro-dynamics of economic, social and political relations.

Producing Media for Development and Social Change

30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

This core module introduces core practical skills in a range of media (digital documentary, radio, podcasting and web design) within a critical context focusing on development and social change. Integrating practice and theory, the module aims to develop insight and knowledge of independent and locally produced media initiatives that facilitate citizen participation and foster social development. After an introduction which sets out the contemporary media landscape and its relationship to an active public sphere, the module will focus on case studies of a variety of media projects - such as community radio, mobile media, and documentary projects in the developing world. The practical component of this module focuses on executing exercises in a variety of media formats which will integrate the acquired skills and insights. This course will include some master classes by NGO representatives and/or media professionals who will present a variety of case studies.

The Architecture of Aid

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This course explores the structure and organisation of the aid industry. You will cover the colonial heritage of the aid industry; the Washington and Post-Washington consensuses and the nature of structural adjustment; the rise of the NGO sector; the nature of the project and post-project approaches to development; and relations between disaster relief and development.

Back to module list

Entry requirements

UK entrance requirements

A first- or upper second-class undergraduate honours degree in an appropriate discipline. We also welcome applicants who do not have this academic qualification but who have work experience in the field of development or media. The latter applicants will be shortlisted on the basis of their CV and a personal statement to demonstrate analytical and writing skills.

Overseas entrance requirements

Please refer to column A on the Overseas qualifications.

If you have any questions about your qualifications after consulting our overseas qualifications table, contact the University.
E pg.enquiries@sussex.ac.uk

Visas and immigration

Find out more about Visas and immigration.

English language requirements

IELTS 6.5, with not less than 6.5 in Writing and 6.0 in the other sections. Internet TOEFL with 88 overall, with at least 20 in Listening, 20 in Reading, 22 in Speaking and 24 in Writing.

For more information, refer to English language requirements.

For more information about the admissions process at Sussex

For pre-application enquiries:

Student Recruitment Services
T +44 (0)1273 876787
E pg.enquiries@sussex.ac.uk

For post-application enquiries:

Postgraduate Admissions,
University of Sussex,
Sussex House, Falmer,
Brighton BN1 9RH, UK
T +44 (0)1273 877773
F +44 (0)1273 678545
E pg.applicants@sussex.ac.uk 

Fees and funding

Fees

Home UK/EU students: £5,9001
Channel Island and Isle of Man students: £5,9002
Overseas students: £13,4503

1 The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.
2 The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.
3 The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.

To find out about your fee status, living expenses and other costs, visit further financial information.

Funding

The funding sources listed below are for the subject area you are viewing and may not apply to all degrees listed within it. Please check the description of the individual funding source to make sure it is relevant to your chosen degree.

To find out more about funding and part-time work, visit further financial information.

Sussex Graduate Scholarship (2013)

Region: UK, Europe (Non UK), International (Non UK/EU)
Level: PG (taught)
Application deadline: 16 August 2013

Open to final year Sussex students who graduate with a 1st or 2:1 degree and who are offered a F/T place on an eligible Masters course in 2013.

Faculty interests

Faculty research interests in the School of Media, Film and Music

Our internationally respected research explores questions around the materialities, technologies and politics of cultural forms and formations. Researchers work on, across and through a range of media: film, television, radio, photography, and ‘new’ and interactive forms. 

They specialise within three interlocking themes: 

Cultural histories/cultural politics

Research is focused on histories of journalism and the public sphere and the relationships between cultures, technological change and social and political change. It also encompasses an analysis of the construction of national identities and borders, and their institutionalised histories and marginalised others. 

Media technology, form and experience 

The relationships between technology, form and experience are explored through studies of techno-cultural innovation, sense perception, and embodied experience. A key aspect, which builds on expertise in the Department, is the development of new critical frameworks for the exploration of new media forms and practices as they emerge in everyday life. 

The politics of representation

The Department of Media and Film has long been a centre of excellence for research on gender, sexuality and representation. We continue to build on this through a concern with the images and narratives of popular culture, and the ways in which these construct identities and play on pleasures, fears and desires. 

Individual research interests are briefly described below.

Dr Caroline Bassett New media technologies, most recently working on narrative and new media. Published widely on new media and gender. 

Dr Michael Bull Works extensively on the nature of auditory experience. Specialises in the work of The Frankfurt School. 

Wilma de Jong Researcher, scriptwriter, director and producer. Media and activism, independent production, documentary and news. 

Andrew Duff Production tutor. Specialises in exploring reactive and interactive multimedia, experimental digital and analogue audio. 

Melanie Friend Documentary photographer. Representations of conflict and trauma, asylum detention in the UK. 

Lee Gooding Senior production tutor. Has produced a range of programmes for a number of organisations. 

Adrian Goycoolea Film-maker addressing issues of identity, exploring the intersections of personal memory with social and political histories. 

Dr Ben Highmore The culture of daily life. Author of A Passion for Cultural Studies (2009); Ordinary Lives (2009). 

Dr Gholam Khiabany Academic leader of the journalism degrees. 

Dee Kilkelly Production tutor. Co-runs APT new media, a collective responsible for art events and club nights in and around Brighton. 

Mary Agnes Krell Media artist whose work spans performance, digital media and narrative practices. 

Dr Kate Lacey Gender, media and the public sphere. Has published widely on radio history and theory. Current work focuses on listening publics. 

Andy Medhurst Post-war British popular culture; media representations of masculinity and homosexuality. 

Dr Monika Metykova Lecturer in media communications/journalism studies. 

Dr Sharif Mowlabocus Digital cultures, gender, sexuality and representation. Author of Gaydar Culture (2010). 

Professor Sally R Munt Queer studies, cultural studies, identity and emotion. Co-author of Queer Spiritual Spaces: Sexuality and Sacred Places (2010). 

Dr Kate O’Riordan Cultural studies of science and technology. Author of Human Cloning and the Media: from Science Fiction to Science Practice (2008); The Genome Incorporated (2010). 

Dr Martin Spinelli Produces award-winning literary and experimental radio projects. Interests include radio art and sound poetry, and cultural studies. 

Lizzie Thynne Film-maker who has exhibited widely in broadcast, festival and gallery contexts. Interests include auto/biography and surrealism. 

Janice Winship Published on women’s magazines, advertising and consumption in the 20th century. 

Kirk Woolford Media artist who engages in practice-led research to explore concepts that defy textual representation.

Faculty research interests in the School of Global Studies

Within the School of Global Studies there is a close academic collaboration between departments and interdisciplinary research centres. Both faculty and students are members of the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, the Centre for World Environmental History, the Justice and Violence Research Centre, andSussex Centre for Migration Research. Research interests are briefly described below. For more detailed information, visit International development.

Dr Andreas Antoniades Globalisation, political economy.

Professor Richard Black Migration, poverty and development; natural resource management.

Dr Paul Boyce Gender, sexualities, health, South Asia.

Dr Grace Carswell East Africa, Southern India; rural livelihoods; population-environment interactions.

Professor Andrea Cornwall Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Brazil, India, UK: political anthropology, gender.

Dr Vinita Damodaran Protest and nationalism in India.

Dr Geert De Neve Politics of labour in India, anthropology of globalisation.

Professor Saul Dubow Racial segregation and apartheid, ethnicity and national identity, the nature of imperialism and of colonial science.

Professor Mick Dunford China, regional and urban economic development.

Dr Nigel Eltringham Rwanda, anthropology of rights and reconciliation.

Professor James Fairhead West and central Africa; environmental anthropology; conflict, violence, health.

Dr Anne-Meike Fechter Ethnographies of aid workers, gender, South-East Asia.

Professor Katy Gardner Mining, livelihoods and social development in Bangladesh; transnational migration and development.

Dr Elizabeth Harrison Partnership and participation, development discourses, UK and sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr Pamela Kea Gender relations, agrarian change and development.

Dr Evan Killick Poverty, development and social relations in Amazonia.

Dr Mark Leopold Conflict and political violence in Uganda.

Professor Alan Lester Colonial origins of humanitarianism, imperial networks in Africa and Australia.

Dr Julie Litchfield Poverty and development.

Dr Peter Luetchford Central America, fair trade and development.

Dr Kamran Matin Processes of modern socio-political transformation in the Middle East.

Dr Lyndsay McLean Hilker Conflict and violence, reconciliation, ethnicity, Rwanda.

Professor Peter Newell Environment, development and climate change.

Dr Filippo Osella Social relations, migration, masculinity in South India.

Dr Fabio Petito International political theory, international relations of the Mediterranean.

Dr Rebecca Prentice Health, gender and the politics of labour.

Dr Dinah Rajak Corporate social responsibility and development.

Dr David Robinson Impacts of development; environmental change; soils, coasts.

Dr Ben Rogaly Political economy of migrant work in India.

Dr Pedram Rowhani Climate change and food, GIS, East Africa.

Dr Jan Selby Peace processes and water politics in the Middle East.

Dr Ben Selwyn Export production and development in Brazil.

Professor Ronald Skeldon Professorial Fellow. Population migration in the developing world, especially Asia.

Dr Anna Stavrianakis Global arms trade, civil society, imperialism.

Dr Maya Unnithan India, reproductive rights and development.

Careers and profiles

Civil society institutions, social movements and international development agencies increasingly require skilled and creative people to apply digital media technologies in enhancing their capacity to communicate, interact and influence.

This MA has been developed specifically for those seeking employment in:

  • global or national media industries
  • NGOs and the international voluntary sector
  • international development institutions
  • independent media production.

For more information, visit Careers and alumni.

School and contacts

School of Media, Film and Music

The School of Media, Film and Music combines rigorous critical and historical studies of media, film, music and culture with opportunities for creative practice in a range of musical forms and the media of photography, film, radio, and interactive digital imaging.

School of Media, Film and Music,
University of Sussex, Falmer,
Brighton BN1 9RG, UK
T +44 (0)1273 873481
E mfm@sussex.ac.uk
School of Media, Film and Music

School of Global Studies

The School of Global Studies aims to provide one of the UK's premier venues for understanding how the world is changing. It offers a broad range of perspectives on global issues, and staff and students are actively engaged with a wide range of international and local partners, contributing a distinctive perspective on global affairs.

School of Global Studies,
University of Sussex, Falmer,
Brighton BN1 9SJ, UK
T +44 (0)1273 877686
E devstudiespg@sussex.ac.uk
International development

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