Media and Sociology is a distinctive combined degree that enables you to explore the sociological implications of social media, popular culture, and mass media, whilst offering opportunities to engage in creative media practice such as film-making and photography. You will attend lectures led by an interdisciplinary team of experts in their field, participate in seminars, and get hands-on experience of media production including pre-and post-production techniques. You will have access to media production facilities and the opportunity to try a range of media forms including photography, digital video, magazine production, newsmaking, and social media. The media modules combine a distinctive balance of theory and practice so you can develop as a critical and thoughtful practitioner. You will study the role of media in society, the impact of the political economy on media content, and the relationship between content and audiences. You will analyze popular cultural forms such as TV, memes, film, and news, think about their meaning in contemporary social life and explore your ideas through media production.

Year 1

• Reading Film and Media
• The Photographic Message
• Social inequalities in the contemporary world
• Classical Sociology

• Introduction to Television Studies
• Film Animation: History and Theory
• History, Media, Memory: The Presentation of the Past in Contemporary Culture
• Social inequalities in the contemporary world
• Computer Animation and Multimedia
• Modern European Film and Television
• Film and Culture
• Digital Video
• Audiences: From Moral Panics to Digital Cultures
• The Anthropological Imagination
• Social and Political Theory
• Audiences: From Moral Panics to Digital Cultures
• Investigating Social Issues

Year 2

• Researching Media, Communications and Culture
• Creating Awareness Campaigns
• Contemporary Social Theory
• Research Methods

• Gender and the Cinematic Gaze
• Adaptation
• Thinking Photography
• Documentary: Theory and Practice
• Work Placement for Humanities Students
• Science Fiction Cinema: Utopias and Dystopias
• Global Popular Cinemas
• Making the News
• Social Media and Society
• Education Matters: Contemporary Issues and Debates in Education
• Globalization and its Discontents
• The Magic of Modernity
• Social Media and Society
• Social Movements
• Producing Sociological Knowledge

• Race and Sexuality on Screen
• Approaches to Screenwriting
• Visual Pleasures: From Carnival to Disney
• Music, Conflict and Social Change
• Sustained Media Practice – ISP
• Work Experience in Media, Communications, and Culture
• Media Dissertation
• Postmodernism: Fiction, Film, and Theory
• Modernist Manifestos and Magazines
• Crime in Neoconservative America
• Creative Magazine Production
• Celebrity
• The making of professionals: Education, Health and Social Work
• Home: belonging, locality, and material culture
• Moving People: Migration, emotion, identity
• Dissertation – ISP
• Celebrity
• Consuming Nature

Employability

You will develop as a critical, analytic, and creative thinker, gaining social and communication skills which are useful for a wide range of careers.
Our graduates have entered occupations in creative industries, social care, the health sector, advertising, and marketing. You might go on to work in broadcasting, the movie industry, journalism, publishing, or web design. Some of our graduates choose to pursue further academic study at Masters or doctoral level.

Previous employers

• Vodafone
• Tesco
• Study Group
• Chambers of Commerce
• Local Government
• Jodrell Bank