Digital Media, Culture and Society MA

Why study with us?

The Digital Media, Culture and Society MA programme provides cutting edge research-led teaching by subject experts. In an era of big data, our research explores how datafication impacts upon everyday life and notions of surveillance, as well as its contribution to future cities through intelligent and sustainable transport. Being located in the vibrant digital sector of Brighton gives you a unique advantage in terms of employability and networking.

We also pay attention to emerging technologies and social change, exploring locative media, science, technology, digital health, digital citizenship, policy, governance and education. We have a focus on questions of exclusion, inclusion, identity formation and the role of creative media in affecting social change.

We benefit from close connections with Centres of Research and Enterprise located within the University. These include: The Centre for Digital Media Cultures, the Centre for Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics, the Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender, the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories and the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice. Each of these centres has a cutting-edge speaker programme featuring industry experts that students on the MA are invited to attend and participate in. Many of your lecturers are founding members of these research centres.

The university hosts the prestigious annual CINECITY Film Festival with our partners, the Duke of York's Picturehouse and Screen Archive South East, a public sector moving image archive serving south-east England and based within media at the University of Brighton. The annual Brighton Digital Festival is a chance to attend stimulating activities such as conferences, exhibitions, talks and workshops.

You may choose to study with us entirely in distance learning mode or as a mix of distance learning and blended learning.

Our courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis in order to make sure that what you learn with us is relevant and that your course enables you to develop appropriate skills. When you apply to study with us, we will inform you of any new developments in your chosen programme through Student View.

Who is the course for? 

The Digital Media, Culture and Society MA is of broad relevance to both graduates and professionals interested in how advances in digital media shape our cultural, political and social lives. 

The course combines the digital fabric of learning with academic and applied interrogation of an extensive range of media-related developments in economy, society and culture.

The flexible modes of study (online, campus, full-time and part-time), combined with students' own choice of route through the course, make this course particularly attractive to academics, teachers, educators, media professionals, practitioners, managers and innovators.

Academics, teachers and educators Those working in education or wishing to pursue an academic career can further their media subject knowledge and expertise by going on to doctoral study after the Digital Media, Culture and Society MA.

Media professionals, practitioners, managers and innovators Those seeking to pursue a leading role in a cultural, creative or social organisation will gain skills in managing research projects while developing a critical understanding of the nature of cultural industries and the digital sector.

Course structure 

Core modules

• Practising Media Research
• Understanding Digital Culture and Society
• Debates in Digital Media: Policy, literacy and social inclusion
• Dissertation

Options

• Professional Media Practice: Industries and cultures
• Participatory Media Production for Social Change*
• Collaborative Documentary Media Production**
• Digital Cities
• Big Data, Culture and Society
• Social and Digital Media Activism 

*On-campus only
**On-campus and distance learning

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

It is possible to complete shorter programmes in Digital Media, Culture and Society at postgraduate certificate and postgraduate diploma level.

During your studies, you'll benefit from flexibility in content, form and delivery. This flexibility is increased through the availability of online distance education modules. Not only is it possible to switch modes from on-campus to distance learning, you may also choose to complete the entire degree through distance learning.

Distance learning

Students can complete the Digital Media, Culture and Society MA in online distance mode, either through part-time or full-time study. Distance learners follow the same weekly syllabus as on-campus students and engage online on a continuous basis with the teaching staff and their peers.

Each module has a guide that contains detailed information about the module content, readings and assessments, as well as clear instructions on how to engage with it. The University of Brighton’s student intranet system, My Studies, is used to teach and deliver the modules.

If you are a distance learner, each module sees you: reading the module guide and collected readings to grasp the shape, content and pathway through the teaching material; participating in online discussion boards to engage with the weekly topics; and conducting independent research and background reading to support all parts of your module study in preparation for the assessment.

Module tutors facilitate discussion and offer guidance throughout.

Provisions

• Seminar discussions are facilitated in a number of ways to enable distance learners to participate. These include live video conferencing, online chat rooms and discussion forums.

• Masterclasses, lectures and on-campus seminars are video or audio recorded and uploaded for students to access online on My Studies within 48 hours of the class. A range of seminars will also be streamed live online.

• All weekly readings are electronically accessible online on My Studies.

• All assignments are submitted electronically through My Studies (with the exception of physical artefacts, which are submitted by post).

• One-to-one tutorials are conducted either online either using video conferencing or a telephone conversation.

Meet the team

You will be taught by leading academics in visual communication, social media, smart technologies and media production for social change.

Dr Julia Winckler, course leader
Dr Julia Winckler’s research interests include co-production of knowledge, Archives, Memory & Migration, Photography and activism. Co-researcher on a SSHR Canada project (2013–2018) for which Julia co-curated exhibitions in Toronto, Brighton and Lisbon. Read Julia's full profile.

Dr Eleftherios Zenerian
Dr Zenerian’s current research focuses on popular music and everyday life. Through a series of case-studies, each one deploying different methodological approaches including ethnography, self-ethnography, cultural biography of things, textual analysis, and in-depth interviewing, he investigates the different ways in which popular music fans engage with music and music technologies, how the meanings of music enter their everyday lives, and how fans participate in the production of popular music. The first output of this research was published in the Metal Music Studies journal in 2018 (issue 4.1). Read Eleftherios' full profile.

Dr Maria Sourbati
Maria’s research explores social implications of technological change and transformation of the media technologies and services through digitalisation and ageing. She has developed expertise in communications regulation, communication and social policy, new media and older people, digital media, disability, age and ageism. Maria’s current research examines digital data, media technologies and age relations as part of complex sets of relations of power that shape a person’s experience along time and other social markers of difference, including gender, race and class. Read Maria's full profile.

Dr Gemma Cobb
Gemma has a PhD in Gender Studies (Humanities) and her research focuses in pro-anorexia online spaces. Her thesis explored how thinness is represented across a raft of websites, forums, and social media identifying as pro-ana. It argued that, despite media vilification and continued censorship of pro-ana online spaces, the boundaries between mainstream espousal of the thin ideal and the bodies promoted in pro-ana culture are increasingly blurred. Read Gemma's full profile.

Other teaching staff on the course include Dr Frauke Behrendt, Dr Theodore Koulouris, Dr Peter Day, Dr Ryan Burns, Dr Patricia Prietro Blanco, Dr Aristea Fotopoulou, Dr Paula Hearsum, Dr Olu Jenzen and Irmgard Karl.

International requirements and visas

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Visas and immigration advice

Course fees

Info

The fees listed here are for full-time courses beginning in the academic year 2023–24.

Further tuition fees are payable for each subsequent year of study and are subject to an annual increase of no more than 5% or RPI (whichever is the greater). The annual increase for UK students, who are subject to regulated fees, will increase no more than the statutory maximum fee.

You can find out more about our fees in the university's student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

The tuition fee you have to pay depends on a number of factors including the kind of course you take, and whether you study full-time or part-time. If you are studying part-time you will normally be charged on a pro rata basis depending on the number of modules you take.

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