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Digital Media, Culture and Society MA

  • Intro
  • Course
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  • Careers
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    criteria
  • Fees
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Intro

The Digital Media, Culture and Society MA is an innovative programme that stays responsive to key developments in contemporary digital media, culture and society.

The programme is aimed at both professionals and media graduates wishing to pursue or develop their interests in how advances in digital media shape our cultural, political and social lives.

The course engages with some of the most exciting and pressing issues of our time, such as activism, big data, the cultural and creative economy, participatory and creative media, everyday life, future cities, social wellbeing and identity.

It covers key theoretical debates, drawing from local, national and global contexts to help you develop the critical and methodological skills necessary for researching the role of digital technologies in culture and society.  

Our knowledge-exchange activities engage us with diverse businesses, communities and policy actors including media, publishers, digital companies, community groups and NGOs, which will allow you to make professional contacts during your studies.

The course offers flexible modes of study through online distance or campus learning – full-time or part-time. There are also opportunities to complete shorter programmes at both certificate and diploma level.

Find out about postgraduate events

Key facts

Location Brighton: Moulsecoomb

Full-time 1 year
Part-time 3 years

Apply online

Please review the entry requirements carefully and if you have any questions do get in touch with us.

Apply now for your place

I rate my course journey as a distance learner in an extremely positive way. It gave me the opportunity to study a topic I was passionate about and taught by highly prepared teachers while carrying out other projects and commitments. I feel I have been as equally supported as on-campus students by teachers and the university staff.

Emilia Croce

Course content

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.

Julia Winkler

Our latest news

CDCI Symposium – Game Over: Subverting the ‘Smart’ City 

CDCI Symposium – Game Over: Subverting the ‘Smart’ City 

Featuring the boardgame Deliverights, designed by alum Lisa Wiesenhaan!

MA DMCS Alumna Emilia Croce publishes journal article in peer reviewed Visual Studies

MA DMCS Alumna Emilia Croce publishes journal article in peer reviewed Visual Studies

Congratulations Emilia – on a great and topical research project!

MA Digital Media Culture and Society Online Degree Show

MA Digital Media Culture and Society Online Degree Show

You can view the work of some of the MA 2021 postgraduate students here.

UNVERSITY OF BRIGHTON Research Week 16-20 November ART/MEDIA/JOURNALISM

UNVERSITY OF BRIGHTON Research Week 16-20 November ART/MEDIA/JOURNALISM

Read more from our blog

Careers

We take topical elements of media education, creative industries, literacy theory, and communication and media studies and offer students a suite of modules to fit career goals, family and working patterns, and personal interests.

Graduates of the MA will be able to:

  • demonstrate a range of analytical, critical, collaborative practice and professional skills relevant to the digital media sector.
  • understand how cultural, social and economic differences operate in mediated environments, and how they are changing with new media technologies.
  • use a range of research methods and work within diverse disciplinary and professional paradigms.

Being taught by researchers active in these areas will help prepare you for doctoral (PhD) study. Previous students include PhD candidates at Salford and Brighton, a lecturer at the University of Sussex, a journalist and presenter at the Chongqing Broadcasting Group, an employee in the public diplomacy division at NATO, the founder of Australia's Swarn Conference, a project manager at Agile Impact Group, and a creative producer at the International Symposium of Electronic Art.

A group of students all wearing VR headsets

Entry criteria

Entry requirements

Degree and experience
While a bachelor degree (2:2 in a related subject) is the conventional path into the qualification, there is recognition of professional practice and experience. In your application, please tell us about you, your expertise, and what has drawn you to the qualification.

English language requirements
IELTS 6.5 overall with a minimum of 5.5 in each element. Find out more about the other English qualifications that we accept.

International students whose language skills do not match the IELTS scores set out here should consider applying for this course through our Extended Masters programme.

International requirements and visas

International requirements by country
Country name
Albania
Algeria
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Belarus
Belgium
Bermuda
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Bulgaria
Burma (Myanmar)
Cameroon
Canada
Chile
China
Colombia
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Ecuador
Egypt
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Guyana
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kosovo
Kuwait
Latvia
Lebanon
Liechtenstein
Libya
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Malaysia
Malawi
Malta
Mexico
Moldova
Montenegro
Morocco
Namibia
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Palestinian National Authority
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Russian Federation
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Africa
South Korea
Spain
Sri Lanka
Syria
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Tanzania
Thailand
Tunisia
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United States
Uzbekistan
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

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

Visit our language centre

For English language preparation courses.

Visit our International College

For degree preparation courses.

Visas and immigration advice

Applying for a student visa

Check out our step-by-step guidance.

Fees

Course fees

UK (full-time) 9,100 GBP

International (full-time) 15,800 GBP

What's included

You may have to pay additional costs during your studies. The cost of optional activities is not included in your tuition fee and you will need to meet this cost in addition to your fees. A summary of the costs that you may be expected to pay, and what is included in your fees, while studying a course in the School of Art and Media in the 2022–23 academic year are listed here.

  • Typically, practice-based courses incur more costs than text-based subjects. For many courses you will need to budget for the cost of specialist materials, equipment and printing and are likely to spend between £50–£300 per year.
  • For some courses you may also need to budget up to £100 for specialist personal protective clothing which, with care, will last for the whole of your course and beyond.
  • For most courses you will have the opportunity to attend field trips and off-site visits, for example to galleries, exhibitions and studios both in the UK and overseas. These are optional and are not required to pass your course. The amount spent would be based on location and number of trips taken, and typically range between £100 and £700 across the duration of your course.
  • You will have access to computers and necessary software at City campus and Moulsecoomb campus and at other locations across the university. Specialist equipment is provided to cover essential learning. Students may choose to buy their own specialist equipment, these may include cameras, or computers and software, university/student discounts are available for some equipment and software. Budgets can range from £50–£2,000. Buying specialist equipment is best undertaken in consultation with our academic and technical staff. This expenditure is not essential to pass any of our courses.
  • For some courses you will need to budget up to £200 for printing and publishing. Photography courses may incur higher costs (£500–£2,000) when printing and framing images of professional standard for public presentation.
  • Course books, magazines and journals are available in the university libraries. You do not need to have your own copies, but if you wish to, you should budget up to £200 over your course to buy them.
  • For courses in which there is an optional placement year, you will need to budget for living costs (rent, food, travel etc) in that city/country, as if you were on site at the university.
  • For some courses you will need to budget up to £150 for stationery.
  • Final-year graduation shows are opportunities to present your final, independent project work to the public. Practice-based courses will typically incur higher costs. Depending on the specific nature of your final project you will need to budget between £20–£2,500.

You can chat with our enquiries team if you have a question or need more information. Or check our finance pages for advice about funding and scholarships as well as more information about fees and advice on international and island fee-paying status.

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.

Location and student life

Campus where this course is taught

Moulsecoomb campus

Two miles north of Brighton seafront, Moulsecoomb is our largest campus and student village. Moulsecoomb has been transformed by a recent development of our estate. On campus you'll find new Students' Union, events venue, and sports and fitness facilities, alongside the library and student centre.

Over 900 students live here in our halls, Moulsecoomb Place and the new Mithras halls – Brunswick, Goldstone, Hanover, Preston and Regency.

Moulsecoomb has easy access to buses and trains and to all the exciting things happening in our home city.

Two people walking past Mithras halls

Accommodation

Brighton: Moulsecoomb

We guarantee an offer of a place in halls of residence to all eligible students.

Halls of residence
We have self-catered halls on all our campuses, within minutes of your classes, and other options that are very nearby.

You can apply for any of our halls, but the options closest to your study location are:

  • Mithras Halls are stylish new high-rises in the heart of the student village at our revitalised Moulsecoomb campus with ensuite rooms for more than 800 students.
  • Varley Park is a popular dedicated halls site, offering a mix of rooms and bathroom options at different prices.

Want to live independently? We can help – find out more about private renting.

Relaxing in halls

Modern accommodation at Moulsecoomb

Mithras halls room with a view

Relaxing in halls near the campus

Student Union social space

Student Union social space at Moulsecoomb

Local area

About Brighton

The city of Brighton & Hove is a forward-thinking place which leads the way in the arts, technology, sustainability and creativity. You'll find living here plays a key role in your learning experience.

Brighton is a leading centre for creative media technology, recently named the startup capital of the UK.

The city is home to a national 5G testbed and over 1,000 tech businesses. The digital sector is worth over £1bn a year to the local economy - as much as tourism.

All of our full-time undergraduate courses involve work-based learning - this could be through placements, live briefs and guest lectures. Many of these opportunities are provided by local businesses and organisations.

It's only 50 minutes by train from Brighton to central London and less than 40 minutes to Eastbourne. There are also daily direct trains to Bristol, Bedford, Cambridge, Gatwick Airport, Portsmouth and Southampton.

Map showing distance to London from Brighton
Brighton Beach sunset

Maps

Moulsecoomb campus map

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Support and wellbeing

Your course team

Your personal academic tutor, course leader and other tutors are all there to help you with your personal and academic progress. You'll also have a student support and guidance tutor (SSGT) who can help with everything from homesickness, managing stress or accommodation issues.

Your academic skills

Our Brighton Student Skills Hub gives you extra support and resources to develop the skills you'll need for university study, whatever your level of experience so far.

Your mental health and wellbeing

As well as being supported to succeed, we want you to feel good too. You'll be part of a community that builds you up, with lots of ways to connect with one another, as well having access to dedicated experts if you need them. Find out more.

Students talking in a social area

Sport at Brighton

Sport Brighton

Sport Brighton brings together our sport and recreation services. As a Brighton student you'll have use of sport and fitness facilities across all our campuses and there are opportunities to play for fun, fitness or take part in serious competition. 

Find out more about Sport Brighton.

Sports scholarships

Our sports scholarship scheme is designed to help students develop their full sporting potential to train and compete at the highest level. We offer scholarships for elite athletes, elite disabled athletes and talented sports performers.

Find out more about sport scholarships.

Students playing frisbee

Stay in touch

Find out about postgraduate events

Ask a question about this course

If you have any questions, contact the course leader or senior programme assistant who will be happy to help.  

Course leader Julia Winckler
j.winckler@brighton.ac.uk

Senior programme assistant Sasha Coe
s.coe2@brighton.ac.uk

Art, Design, Architecture and Media blog

MA Digital Media, Culture and Society blog

Join us on Facebook Digital Media, Culture and Society 

Twitter @MAdmcs_ub

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