Researching Media and Communication (P5016)

30 credits, Level 5

Spring teaching

This module introduces you to the importance of studying research methods, enabling you to critically evaluate the work of researchers – and your own. It will also enable students to reflect on the issue of research ethics.

The module is taught through a lecture series plus seminars. The lectures cover quantitative and qualitative approaches commonly used in media and communications, such as questionnaires, content analysis, textual and visual analysis, interviewing, and ethnographic approaches.

The seminars provide you with a general training in these research methods, including research design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 300 hours of work. This breaks down into about 32 hours of contact time and about 268 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2023/24. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum. We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.

Courses

This module is offered on the following courses:

• English and Media Studies (with a study abroad year) BA
• English and Media Studies BA
• Media and Communications BA
• Media and Journalism BA