Applied Media Studies – (M.A.)

Contents

The MA Applied Media Studies concentrates on the application of academic ideas to the everyday communications challenges encountered in NGO, voluntary and public organisations. Academic theory and commentary is often abstract, obscure in its language, and removed from daily concerns. This programme employs academic concepts as practical ‘thinking tools’ which can be used by students to better understand, describe and intervene in media processes. Rather than offering a generic and traditionally academic approach to media, the MA Applied Media Studies focuses on the development of skills that are necessary for meaningful and consequential media interventions in civil society.

To do this, the programme has been designed along three thematic lines. These are (1) Media Literacy and Advocacy, (2) Media Texts and Narrative, and (3) Understanding Cultural Production and Consumption. The first theme, Media Literacy and Advocacy, provides the programme with a pragmatic and career-oriented focus. This strand combines modules in media theory, community based learning, community based research and media advocacy. While being informed by academic conceptual and methodological rigour this stream is firmly grounded in practical communications.

'Media Texts and Narrative’ complements this initial strand by providing detailed explorations of narrative forms, modes of representation as well as an in-depth examination of dominant and subaltern forms in documentary and entertainment. This stream explores how interventions in civil society may be made not only through informational media, like news and current affairs, but also through narrative forms like drama and documentary.

Finally, ‘Understanding Cultural Production and Consumption’ locates media activity within a broader political and economic context. It goes beyond the traditional political economy approach by entering into media organisations to explore their internal cultures and processes. A key problem for many advocacy groups is a poor understanding of how producers and journalists go about their daily work. This stream will help learners to understand how production cycles, funding constraints and organisational cultures shape media output. As well as addressing the context and internal operations of the ‘culture industries’ this stream will also critically examine media output. Thus this stream will stress the linkage between political and economic conditions and the form and content of media output.