Mass Communication (Top-Up) BA (Hons)
Level 6 Entry | 1 Year, Full-Time

After undertaking this module, you will be able to identify the normative presuppositions involved in ethical dialogue and use this in your analysis of ethical issues. This will enable you to better understand conflicts over such issues as executive pay, prompt payment, workplace rights, privacy, positive discrimination and many others. When developing organisation policy, representing the organisation in the media, negotiating agreements and otherwise undertaking work with an ethical dimension, this will enable you to anticipate and plan for objections, to identify weaknesses and contradictions in your interlocutors’ arguments and your own and thereby enable you to better manage ethical conflict at work. Through this process you will also improve your internal ethical dialogue. Clarifying your own normative presuppositions, values and virtues and better understanding their implications and exclusions will enable you to reflect upon the coherence of your own moral agency.

This module will introduce students to transnational cinema with an aim to help them understand creative practices and filmmaking contexts beyond Europe and North America. It will provide critical overviews of transnational cinema, migration and diaspora, national and anticolonial positionalities in relation to film movements, and production and distribution contexts. The module will enable students to critically engage not only with films beyond the western mainstream or arthouse cinema but also with how globalisation necessitates transnational collaborations as a survival strategy to counter Hollywood’s dominance in the global market. Students will also engage with debates and discussion on, for example, Transnational vs Global/World cinema, First/Second/Third Cinema, Imperfect Cinema/Aesthetics of Hunger and film manifestoes from the Global South. Through critical, historical, and productional sessions along with screenings of films, the module will enable students to produce critically informed work that challenges prevailing understanding about cinema furthering the goal of decolonising the film curriculum.

This module will encourage you to develop critical understanding of current debates about new media and their centrality in contemporary societies. You will be introduced to the key theories, issues and debates regarding the production, use and distribution of digital media. You will become familiar with key issues and ideas in new media theory and in the interrelationships between digital media, technologies, and societies. You will develop critical skills in analysing digital media and understanding their roles in the information society. The module will look at how these developments are related to social tensions by asking crucial questions about the rise and persistence of the digital divide. In this context, especial attention will be given to the issues of inequalities in accessing, using and getting advantages from new media. The module will also analyse how social media are changing and reshaping our social world. Such analytical thrust will rely on the use of case studies and examples as means to understand how new media are permeating our society and everyday life, transforming the way in which we think and act in a digital society, affecting the decision-making processes of the cultural and creative industries, the way key societal actors communicate, and our perception of crucial social issues such as surveillance/privacy, online identities and activism.

This module will provide a space to familiarize yourself with the case study as a tool for the investigation of social, economic, cultural, and technological phenomena connected with phenomena that reflect on the role of media in contemporary societies.

Whether your interests lie in how people from ethnic minorities or standards of beauty are represented in advertising, videogames or film, on how companies tap on influencers to market their products, or how Twitter is used by journalists to cover breaking news or by television viewers to discuss their favourite shows on TV, this module will offer you a mix of knowledge, reference materials and guidance to choose, plan, conduct, and write a case study for your assessment.

A key component of the module will involve the study of iconic case studies, such as The Disney Company’s evolution from a national animation workshop to a global media conglomerate, to Russia’s use of information agencies such as Sputnik International to deliver propaganda to audiences all over the world, and the BBC’s problematic use of the journalistic principle of balance. Lecturers delivering this module may vary their selection of case studies to reflect on the latest developments, ensuring they will be of interest to students enrolled.

The module will be a valuable experience to learn aspects of the research process you could apply for writing essays, under- and postgraduate dissertations, whilst providing you with skills you could apply in a variety of professions such as journalism, marketing, public relations, and policymaking. Part of the core knowledge and skills that you will be expected to develop for this module will involve you in familiarising yourself with the extensive array of Northumbria University’s digital resources. You will then be expected to use electronic repositories of data, reference, archive, and multimedia materials, such as LexisNexis, WaybackMachine, Box of Broadcasts, and EBSCO, among others, to research the original content required to develop your own case study.

Through critical and theoretical study of gender, sex and sexualities across a wide range of media this module untangles the relationships of community, entertainment, identity, pleasure and media technologies. It explores key theoretical approaches to gender and sexuality and engages with the heated social, cultural and political debates over how gender, sex and sexuality ‘should be’ represented. We examine framings of masculinity and femininity, and explore gender beyond the binary, building on both developments in queer and transgender studies, as well as on the long history of different understandings of gender in cultures around the world. This module thus takes a broad and transnational approach to questions of gender, sexuality, media and human rights, and works to decolonise understandings of these concepts. Similarly, questions of sex and sexuality – recognised as more than effects or questions of biology – will be interrogated. Exploring ideas about, and attitudes to, gender and sexuality and the role(s) that media of various kinds have played in making meanings about intimate life students will examine contemporary media texts and the conceptual framings of ‘the sexualisation of culture’, alongside social media practices and experiences in order to investigate identity politics, sexual subcultures and theories of mediated representations and practices. Our analyses will trace the ways dominant discourses of sexuality from the past jostle for position in contemporary media particularly about gendered and 'normal' vs 'transgressive' sexualities. Gendered relations within media industries themselves are also explored. As we engage with the ways people have moved beyond ‘simple’ consumption of media, to become producers of their own representations via social media platforms, digital technologies and other media artefacts we also explore the possibilities for subverting traditional understandings of what it means to gendered and/or sexed in the 21st Century.

In this module you will be introduced to the theory and practice of media communication strategy and planning. You will be instructed in the workings of modern communications including public relations, advertising, media, and digital communications and the interaction of these. You will undertake applied research and analysis to deliver your own original media communication campaign including content creation following instruction and feedback given during workshops. You will also apply your creativity to explore contemporary issues in media communication practice such as issues and crisis management and the application of media communication to specific communication disciplines and industry sectors. While this module gives you the opportunity to hone a variety of skills which are transferrable across a range of career paths it is particularly valuable for students wishing to gain future employment within the media communication field.

Academic skills when studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition in the use and practice of technical language and subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills to a higher level.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding assignment briefs and exam questions.
• Developing academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Listening skills for lectures.
• Speaking in seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.