Digital Media & Culture – (M.Sc.)

This is a one year research-based degree that examines theories and philosophies of digital media, technological change, the mass media, computation, artificial intelligence, and the social and cultural contexts in which such developments take place. It is a research degree, with some coursework, and can be completed in a year, or the course content can constitute the first year of PhD study. The degree can also be taken part time over two years.

Students of this programme will be part of a dynamic community of researchers exploring many aspects of computing: its social ramifications, the world of e-commerce, e-entrepreneurship, e-learning, project-based composition and artistic works, digital architecture, links between vision and sound, non-place, and more.

The MSc/Dip by Research in Digital Media and Culture admits students from cultural theory, philosophy, fine art, design, architecture, urbanism or other fields in the humanities. It also welcomes applicants with an interest in human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, interaction design, composition, and art/design practice. The core of the course is Media and Culture (P00175 20 credits), supported by a series of optional lecture-based courses and reading courses.

The programme provides an opportunity for students to pursue research in theoretical and reflective aspects of digital media and culture. Students take a minimum of 100 credits as research project work, dissertation or research methods courses. There is no mandatory design or technical component to this programme, but students can elect to take courses from the MSc in Design and Digital Media and the MSc in Sound Design.

The progamme aims to

* develop specific knowledge and provide a broadly-based foundation for research into theories of culture and design in the context of digital media. (Digital media primarily, but not exclusively, covers considerations of the Internet, information systems, digital film, computer games, mobile and distributed computing, ubiquitous computing, haptics, e-commerce, e-learning, digital art practice, immersive environments, artificial intelligence, artificial life, generative systems, and computer-aided design.)
* develop understandings of digital technology´s complicity in reconfigurations of identity, spatiality, communication, the local and the global, and narratives of social and cultural transformation
* encourage critical responses to developments in digital media
* develop critiques of commentaries on digital media that appear in the academic and popular literature
* examine critically the cultural and social contexts in which technological change takes place, through theories of urbanism, spatiality, globalization, non-place and cultural landscape
* provide intellectual support for digital media design and art practice, installation design, composition, architecture and other practice-based applications
* compare critically the relevance to digital media studies of theories drawn from phenomenology, analytical philosophy, positivism, romanticism, various schools of thought within philosophy, psychology, perception, aesthetics, ethics and language, critical theory, hermeneutics, deconstruction, post-colonial studies, semiotics, feminism, structuralism and poststructuralism
* provide an analytical framework to enable students to develop scholarly and informed thinking in their chosen area of research
* provide a foundation for advanced research