Media and Communication with a Foundation Year - BA (Hons)

This core year one module is delivered in Semester 1 and Semester 2, over 20 taught weeks. In Semester 1, we will focus on the academic study of media texts. Through set readings, e-learning and class discussions, we will introduce key analytical concepts that you will use to interpret media texts within their social, cultural and technological contexts. You will reflect critically on the techniques you use in your own media production work.

This module is delivered in Semester 1, over 10 taught weeks, and comprises a set of parallel specialist workshops covering a range of media production areas.

The workshops will include both practical and theoretical elements, and will develop your basic technical, editorial and critical skills in the particular specialist area. The approach is practice-led, with theoretical knowledge applied. Depending on the workshop, you may learn to operate particular technical equipment and specialist software, as well as developing your editorial ideas, and ability to develop, plan and organise activities. Each Workshop will be situated in its media industry context, both nationally and internationally, and will help develop your employability, as potential creative industry workers. You will be encouraged to be creative and innovative in your practical work, and to evidence the production process through appropriate industry-related documentation. You will also develop skills of reflection and critical evaluation, analysing your own work and the skills you have learnt, enabling you to set yourself new goals.

This module is delivered in Semester 1, over 10 taught weeks, and comprises a set of parallel specialist workshops covering a range of media production areas.

The workshops will include both practical and theoretical elements, and will develop your basic technical, editorial and critical skills in the particular specialist area. The approach is practice-led, with theoretical knowledge applied. Depending on the workshop, you may learn to operate particular technical equipment and specialist software, as well as developing your editorial ideas, and ability to develop, plan and organise activities. Each Workshop will be situated in its media industry context, both nationally and internationally, and will help develop your employability, as potential creative industry workers. You will be encouraged to be creative and innovative in your practical work, and to evidence the production process through appropriate industry-related documentation. You will also develop skills of reflection and critical evaluation, analysing your own work and the skills you have learnt, enabling you to set yourself new goals.

Professional and Academic Development will help you develop skills which enable you to understand the nature of the media industries, your own potential and your position within it. Through a mixture of self- driven career planning, work placements and critical reflection, you will develop, apply and hone the skills and knowledge you have learned to a range of media environment.

The ability to work collaboratively in a team is a vital employability skill within the Creative Industries. This module is an opportunity to learn and critically reflect on the skills of collaboration by enabling you to create a group project with students from complementary disciplines.

This core Level 5 module is delivered in Semester 1, over 10 taught weeks, and comprises a set of parallel specialist module sessions.

The sessions will include theoretical elements and approaches to research practices that will inform and enhance your knowledge of production, consumption and industry context, and will build on the critical and analytical skills learnt in year one. The approach is research and theory-led, with research methods applied. Depending on the subject area, you will be examining the current state and changing nature of a particular area of the media. Students will have the opportunity to reflect on issues of production, distribution, and reception. Students will undertake research that explores the changing ideological, political, technological and cultural contexts related to a particular section of industry and will consider the role of the media in relation to societal and cultural contexts.

This core year 2 module is delivered in Semester 1, over 10 taught weeks, and comprises 7 parallel specialist media production workshops.

The workshops will include both practical and theoretical elements, and will build on the technical, editorial and critical skills you learnt in year one, taking them to a more advanced level. The approach is practice-led, with theoretical knowledge applied. Depending on the specialism, you may further develop skills in operating particular technical equipment and specialist software, as well as developing your editorial ideas, and ability to develop, plan and organise activities. Each Workshop will be situated in its media industry context, both nationally and internationally, and will help improve your employability, as potential creative industry workers. You will identify a target audience for your work, and create a cross-media/multi-media product/s in order to help engage your audience.

This module draws on your experience of undertaking a placement, asking you to consider how workplace organisational structures and practices observed during your placement impact upon the nature of media products and services. Through reflecting on your own performance and new skills acquired as a result of this experience, you will plan methods for addressing professional and academic ‘skills gaps’. You will set new targets and objectives to be achieved during a further placement.

The module is an opportunity to learn and critically reflect on the skills of collaboration by enabling you to create an interdisciplinary project with students from complementary disciplines, or with academic staff. Collaboration is a vital employability skill within the Creative Industries and this module allows you to develop these skills, making use of University facilities and with the support of academic staff. Within this module framework, several kinds of collaborative opportunities are available. For example, with the approval of your supervisor, you can determine a project based on your own interests; your supervisor may set you a predetermined project to enable you to work with other students in a way that is appropriate to your subject area; or there may be opportunities for you to collaborate with staff on research projects. In all cases, you must apply your subject skills to an interdisciplinary project which will be agreed in advance with your supervisor.

This module provides an opportunity for you to apply your knowledge and skills to an external, professional brief. The brief will be set by an external client/ agency, in consultation with your supervisor, and it could be a ‘real life’ problem to be solved, or a simulation. It is an opportunity for you to engage in a professional manner with an aspect of your subject area, which contributes to the development of employability skills within the supportive infrastructure of the University. Where appropriate, the project may involve interdisciplinary collaboration with students from other courses. In this way, it reflects the collaborative, flexible nature of employment within the Creative Industries.

The purpose of this module is to enable you to develop professional attributes and subject skills through experience in the work place, and to critically reflect upon your learning in that context. You will normally be expected to arrange your own placement, with support from academic staff and ADM Careers+.

This module applies and develops critical and theoretical study of gender, sexuality and the body across a wide range of media. This module will prepare students who wish to undertake work on gender, sexual dissidence, queer theory and identity in their final year. The module will draw from cultural theory and a range of qualitative and ethnographic research to explore historic and contemporary discussions, issues and debates around gender identity, sexuality and sexual practices, and the body. The module will develop key modes of analysis and research related to the study of gender, sexuality and the body. You will explore how associated socio-cultural, political and ideological contexts ‘produce’ issues, but also how certain identities and ‘practices’ offer ways to challenge ideological views concerning gender, sexuality and what we ‘do’ with/to our bodies. During the module you should be able to link theoretical debates to your own production practice and consumption. The module will critically explore the issues and debates raised by scholarship in the field of gender, sexuality, the body and identity studies; and also issues (ethical, practical and moral) around the application of methodologies in media, communication and cultural studies. The module will add the consideration of ethics and intersections within the study of gender, sexuality and the body (i.e. class, gender, ethnicity, race, education, culture, etc.). As the module applies an extensive critical engagement with theory, students are therefore encouraged to widen their reading and interaction with contemporary research in the areas of gender, sexuality, the body and identity.

This year two module will unpack the various ways in which lifestyles, identities and certain ‘taboo’ practices are created and contested through media artefacts, leisure time activities and pursuits, and social practices. The module explores a range of bodily projects, leisure time pursuits and lifestyle choices to develop how we can understand, study, and ‘feel’ about alternative lifestyles. You will also be able to see the limitations through exploring stigma, pathologisation and Othering lifestyles or identities which are seen to be taboo, temporary or morally corrosive. The module aligns itself with developments in society, law and ‘moral’ frameworks. The module explores hedonistic, emotional, experiential and self-affirming qualities found in a range of alternative lifestyles, leisure time pursuits and practices. The reappraisal of alternative lifestyles will also include the issues, points of tension and ruptures inside alternative modes of self, sexual and bodily expression. A deeper understanding of the complexities and nuances in alternative lifestyles will pave the way for a fresh and innovative stance on identity, lifestyles, diversity youth, and bodily politics. As the module applies an extensive critical engagement with theory, students are therefore encouraged to widen their reading and interaction with contemporary research.

You will build on your previous studies by developing skills in connecting research and practice. Through set readings, class discussions, e-learning and directed study tasks, we will identify and explore key debates, theoretical perspectives and concepts in humour and comedy studies so that you can develop your familiarity with these theoretical fields. You will then test theoretical perspectives and key concepts through your own innovative comedy production. In this work, you will offer research based, critical reflection on your own practice and on political, moral and ethical issues that emerge from the relationships between humour, comedy and power, on both a national and an international scale.

This module offers you the opportunity to investigate community and alternative media practices and organisations, drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives to help you understand the value generated by media produced outside of the mainstream.

Race, ethnicity and the media introduces students to key theories and debates on race and ethnicity in relation to the media, including critical race studies, post-colonial theory, intersectionality and work on equality/diversity within the cultural industries. It will be based around debates around ‘race’ in the UK, but these debates will be situated within a global context. The historical development of concepts of race, ethnicity and immigration will be explored, highlighting their impact on contemporary British society and media.

In a media landscape which is increasingly defined by digital technologies and our relationships with them, this Level 5 module encourages you to consider the role of material, analogue media artefacts and practices in shaping the way that we engage with and understand digital media. From the role of analogue aesthetics in film practice, to the resurgence of the vinyl record, this module will explore a range of issues and debates relating to media, formats, materiality, and digitalisation. You will be presented with a range of critical perspectives on materiality in media, and required undertake research which applies these critical perspectives to your own media interests and practice.

This module offers an introduction to some of the ongoing academic debates on media fandoms and subcultures. Through readings, lectures, seminars and independent research, you will engage with key theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches and case studies in these academic fields. This module is intended to develop the knowledge and skills that you established in your first year, to develop your critical thinking and research skills and to enable you to gather, organise and use secondary and primary sources to express arguments coherently and effectively.

This module will develop your understanding of what defines ‘community’ and how this definition is subject to negotiation and change through the use and appropriation of space. Using a structured framework this module introduces you to the issues, debates, and practical considerations around the use of space, communities, and culture. We will first establish agreed definitions of what we mean by communities, contested landscapes, culture, and heritage. This will enable you to identify key theoretical positions and approaches, which you will then see in action through case studies (in taught sessions) and your own application (in assessment and own case studies). Secondly, we examine through the use of case studies ways in which people navigate around these issues and debates in their media and artistic practices. Finally, the module will invite you to propose solutions to some of the limitations of space uncovered throughout the module’s discussions. The module will be inclusive and will suit those on: events and exhibitions, music industries, production and broad course pathways.

This Level 5 module will look at the way films tell their stories, transfix their audiences, and draw an emotional response. It will focus primarily on the various film narratives, but will also engage in the broader context of film criticism and film theory within which the form has been understood. We will examine films drawn from a range of periods, countries, and traditions, exploring film form and the powerful influence films have had, not only on their immediate effect on audiences but on the wider cultures within which they exist. We will also investigate how these films are using traditional and new methods to market to audiences wide and niche and the ways in which many studios are now inviting fans to get involved with the marketing process.

This module explores the current state of academic knowledge and real world issues relating to media censorship and regulation. The module is designed to encourage you to think about and reflect upon your own assumptions and preconceptions and to think critically and systematically about challenging topics.

This module develops transferable skills in research, analysis, problem solving, teamwork and communication, and you will connect research and practice through formative activities and assessed work.

This module is available as an option to all students who wish to advance their graphic design abilities.

A series of skills workshops and directed study tasks will enable you to refine your understanding of the principles of graphic design and develop your ability to apply those principles within the context of your own practice. During the course of this workshop, you will explore professional working practices and current creative stylistic approaches with due consideration to client needs, key practitioners, and current and future developments that inform production.

Building upon on a number of media production skills established at Level 4, Music Industries Promotional Practices will introduce you to concepts, principles, and practices related to the promotion of music, and musical acts. In this module you will explore and develop promotion and PR techniques and gain insight into how music industries workers build successful working relationships with music and other interrelated media. You will develop a working knowledge of marketing and PR theory applied to music promotion practice and builds up your skills in promotional writing, visualisation, strategy development and campaign management. It also provides a practical insight into the organisation of tours, album and video releases and online promotion. This module develops individual and group project skills and a number of transferrable and critical skills.

This module develops a ‘real world’ understanding of contemporary approaches to commercial production for radio and audio platforms. Topics include idea generation, producing scripts / copy, multi-track digital editing, use of music and sound effects, voice over / talent production, pitching concepts, and scheduling principles. The interdisciplinary nature of audio advertising across various forms of media, such as the Internet and Social Media, will also be assessed. The module explores the wide range of roles and compliance responsibilities associated with commercial radio production, including the positions of account manager, traffic scheduler, creative director, copywriter, voiceover, producer. You will produce an original, series of radio commercials as MP3 audio files for a targeted audience, accompanied by a written report of 2000 words. This report will document your production processes, and include client research, evidence of idea development, audience and platform research, as well as scripts. The report will also include a critical reflection, which evaluates your performance and sets goals for future development.

This module will encourage you to develop original ideas for innovative radio documentaries, within a recognised professional industry context. You will identify a clear target audience for your work. You will produce an individual, self-contained radio documentary with an accompanying reflective written report. A live presentation will showcase your documentary concept and its audience / station in a mock ‘commissioning’ style pitch.

This module is for students wishing to further their photographic abilities. You will explore the professional working practices and creative stylistic approaches specific to fashion photography with due consideration to the fashion media, client needs, key practitioners, as well as current and future developments that inform production.

This module is for students wishing to further their photographic abilities, exploring the professional working practices and the visual language specific to photojournalism with due consideration to the context in which photojournalists and documentary photographers, music photographers and sports photographers operate within the media industries. You will continue to develop camera, lighting and post-processing techniques to a more advanced and appropriate professional level as a complementary skillset to your media interests.

This optional module will help prepare you for undertaking a drama related final Major Project in your final year, in either radio or television.

This module will help prepare you for undertaking a television studio related final Major Project in your final year.

Campaigning and Investigation Journalism is an optional module for all journalism specialists which provides a grounding in key concepts and techniques in the process of journalistic investigations and campaigns. In the first stage of the module you are introduced to key principles of investigations and campaigns across multiple platforms, and typical challenges involved in investigative and campaigning projects, as well as practices of idea generation and planning. This context then provides the basis for exploring a range of investigative and campaigning techniques. The content maps closely with the assessment task.

The ways in which we consume, conceptualise, and interact with music is being constantly redefined in the face of rapid technological change. This Level 5 module, Music, Media, and Digitalisation invites you to engage with a range of contemporary arguments and challenges relating to the digitalisation of music as a media form, and to consider the implications that these arguments and challenges bring to bear on the ways in which you, and others, understand and engage with music. Across this module you will examine and explore a range of critical perspectives on music, media, and digitalisation, examining the histories and developments of digital music technologies, and the disrupting effects that these have had, and continue to have, on the ways in which we access, listen to, and talk about music.

Recent and emerging technologies have created opportunities for bootstrapped media projects—low budget, lean start-ups—to break new ground, to tell stories in innovative ways, and to find an audience. What could you do with the opportunity to make and publish the stories which matter to you? On this module you will get together with likeminded students to develop and publish stories which take into account the affordances of new technologies. Working as a collective, you will publish a range of media products online and will host an event to showcase the work.

The ability to create compelling content is an essential communication skill and the key to employability in a range of media careers, not least in Public Relations. As well as being engaging and accessible, effective communication almost always involves the ability to produce professional content across a range of platforms and channels. This module concentrates on developing the writing and crafting skills that are highly valued by media employers.

Digital Storytelling techniques have evolved to include everything from film techniques, still images, immersive-audio, environmental storytelling, and more. In this module we will consider the different ways in which these techniques can be effectively utilised to allow creative citizens to share their stories and to create engaging and meaningful stories through digital platforms.

This core Level 6 module is delivered in Semester 1, over 10 taught weeks, and comprises parallel specialist media production workshops.

This module will help you consolidate your skills and experience and prepare you to find employment through the development of self-promotion skills specific to your area of professional interest. You will continue to audit your skills and reflectively analyse your placement experience and evaluate its impact on your personal and professional development strategically applying new skills learned to present yourself as a media professional.

The purpose of the module is to enable you to undertake a sustained, in-depth and theoretically informed research project exploring an area that is of personal interest to you. It is important that we can support you appropriately, so you will be guided towards choosing a research topic which is relevant to your discipline and in which your lecturers have expertise. The outcome may take the form of a written dissertation or a practice-based portfolio.

This module examines the critical and theoretical study of queer studies, queer identity and queer politics (Inc. activism) across a wide range of media. This is an option module for all students with an academic interest in the theoretical field and will prepare students who wish to undertake dissertations or final projects that focus on LGBTQ+, identity politics, gender nonconformity, sexual practices, political performance art, fan cultures, entertainment, Twitter celebrities, and dissidence. The module will draw from cultural theory and a range of qualitative and ethnographic research that explore issues and debates in queer studies and queer cultures (art, photography, performance, film/cinema, TV, grassroots activism, etc.). You will explore a range of case studies (contemporary and historic) relating to areas within queer studies and popular dissidence, but also have the opportunity to apply it to a case study of your choice. During the module you should be able to link theoretical debates to your own production practice and consumption, but also identify groups, artists or individuals who have creatively and queerly respond to social and cultural expectations around intimacies, art and popular culture, self-expression, and political practices. The module will critically explore the issues, debates and moral concerns (disciplinary, social, and cultural) raised by scholarship in the fields of queer and cultural studies, but also within the media.

This module will prepare students who wish to develop expertise and knowledge in areas that focus on sex (gender, sexuality, dissidence), texts (media forms) and activism (media, politics, protest). The module will draw from cultural theory and a range of qualitative and ethnographic research that explore issues and debates surrounding how certain creative or activist practices respond to particular gendered, political, socio-cultural restrictions and challenges. You will explore a range of case studies (contemporary and historic) to map out a genealogy of protest, to see where, why and how ‘sites’ of resistance create space for identities, practices and beliefs to exist in their own terms. How these may be absorbed, contested and challenged by wider socio-cultural, political and economic contexts will also be considered. During the module you should be able to link theoretical debates to your own production practice and consumption, but also identify groups, artists or individuals who creatively respond to politics, stigma and censorship. The module will critically explore the issues and debates raised by scholarship in the fields of pornography, sex-worker rights, protest and activism, body politics (gender, sexuality, etc.) and identity studies; and also issues (ethical, practical and moral) around the application of methodologies in media, communication and cultural studies.

You will build on your previous studies by developing skills in connecting research and practice. Through set readings, class discussions, e-learning and directed study tasks, we will identify and explore key debates, theoretical perspectives and concepts in studies of science fiction and fantasy, so that you can develop your familiarity with these theoretical fields. You will engage critically with a specific science fiction or fantasy text by drawing on weekly course topics to expand your text through creative, experimental and innovative transmedia storytelling. Through this work, you will offer research-based, critical reflection on the relationship between science fiction/fantasy texts and their wider social, cultural, political and technological contexts, on both a national and an international scale.

This module is intended to give an overview of the current state of scholarly research into the use of social media platforms as a communication tool. The module provides a systematic understanding of the approaches to studying social media and its social and cultural role. The module looks in detail at the ways in which social media is utilised by citizens and media producers and ask whether these platforms can help alter traditional power relationships in society. There is a focus on how students can put social media to use as a tool for furthering their professional ambitions or to help create advocacy networks.

DIY Music Cultures encouraging you to apply key theoretical and critical concepts to contemporary arguments around DIY music cultures. This will include historical, cultural, political and ideological perspectives of DIY music production, distribution and consumption, which will reflect issues such as ethnicity, gender, class, nationality and religion. You will learn about a range of critical perspectives and positions on DIY music cultures before undertaking individual research and practice into your own choice of area relating to DIY music cultures.

Increasingly, popular culture is being used to commemorate and celebrate cities’ and cultures’ identity and heritage. Post-industrial cities are investing millions of pounds in regeneration initiatives, many of which involve developing museums, art in public open spaces, and heritage tours relating to music, film, and television cultures. While heritage develops through large scale, public and private funded schemes, the rise of digital cultural practices has also seen parallel heritage and archive practices grow online. Despite an increase in streaming and downloading over a physical materiality, there are still strong links between identity and archiving digitally the photographs, ephemera, and memories of our lives.

This module invites you to explore the links between emotion, affect, media and culture. You will examine how media texts are constructed to provoke emotional response, how audiences respond and the cultural discourses which frame production and reception. Throughout the module, you will be introduced to a range of concepts, themes and reflexive methodological approaches which relate to study in this field. You will be supported to develop skills in confidently articulating research verbally.

This module encourages a critical understanding of promotional culture and its impact on consumer culture through the study of contemporary promotional practices. You will consider the centrality of promotion as a social discourse and reflect on the various practices of communications industries, including corporate communications, brand management, advertising, online promotion and transmedia storytelling. You will also consider the motivations and impact of promotional practices on audience behaviour.

This module is for all students with an academic interest in the radio studies field and will prepare you to undertake dissertations or final projects that focus on transnational radio landscapes, transnational storytelling and aesthetics of radio and cultures of radio audiences in your third year. You will learn about radio in a local, national and transnational context. It will particularly appeal to students who have an interest in understanding how radio is organized and produced in other countries and how social, political and economic factors such as migrating and mobile communities, the reconceptualising of the nation state and new technologies are enabling radio to move beyond its national borders and serve larger audiences previously restricted by language or geographical borders.

The art of cinema has the power to not only entertain us, but to also project and reflect representations of the self, fears, and anxieties. As we begin to study film more in depth using the lens of psychoanalysis we will uncover the complexities of the form and style of cinema to understand how narrative structure, genre, and characters are used to create meaning.

This module is a critical and theoretical study of transmedia texts, branding and constructed meanings across a wide range of media. This is an option module for all students with an academic interest in the theoretical field and will prepare students who wish to undertake dissertations or final projects that focus on transmedia narrative development, story experience, and transmedia content production, entertainment branding, tackling global audiences/users and networking digital content in year three. You will learn about the continually evolving transmedia landscape and the new and emerging opportunities for creatives and audiences. It will particularly appeal to you if you have an interest in understanding how audiences are hailed through a variety of media platforms.

Creativity is a key concern in contemporary culture beyond the domain of the ‘artist’ or media worker. Creativity is cited as important in the discourse of sectors as disparate as business, education, urban regeneration and even contemporary political policy, amongst others. This module addresses the particular conditions in which creativity arises and is deployed.

Media Activism is a practice-based research module for students who wish to study media activism, and engage in media activist work in practice within social justice, community media and voluntary sectors. This module will examine the role of media in political campaigns and social movements, with a focus on the role of digital communications. It will draw on a range of interdisciplinary literature from media studies, social movement studies and political theory, and examine case studies of political campaigns and social movements in the UK and globally.

This module builds on basic skills in theoretical studies earlier in the course and applies them to the critical and theoretical study of the portrayal of crime and deviance in the media. This is an option module for all students with an academic interest in the theoretical field and will prepare you to undertake dissertations or final projects that focus on issues around criminality, sexual practices, alternative lifestyles, queer culture, expressions of gender and sexuality in relation to crime, and the dramatisation of narratives. It will particularly appeal to you, if you have an interest in the representation of crime across a variety of media platforms.

On this module you will examine and question what is meant by ‘Quality Television’ and will investigate the fluidity of what ‘quality’ has meant across time and within different production contexts. Throughout the module, you will be introduced to a range of concepts, themes and methodological approaches which relate to study in this field. You will be encouraged and supported to develop skills in confidently articulating your research in writing.

Using public sphere pedagogy, this module will help you to connect activities and theoretical concepts taught in class to real world issues. Throughout the module, you will organise and contribute to a module blog (on Medium) and twitter handle, and, organise and participate in two town hall meetings.