MA Digital Media

The MA Digital Media is unique in its combination of practical and theoretical approaches to contemporary media and technology.

This established and exciting degree is designed to help you understand digital transformations in media, culture, and society and apply this understanding in practice, in the media and creative industries and in further research. The programme will equip you with skills that can be applied to current and future developments in digital media, social media, computing, and other aspects of technology.

The MA Digital Media educates aspiring media practitioners and academics as well as early and mid-career professionals who seek to reflect on their roles in a structured and stimulating learning environment designed to give all students up-to-the-minute knowledge of digital media and the skills to apply that knowledge to future developments.

This programme offers three pathways:

Pathway 1 is a Theory programme where you learn about developments in digital media and technology. This pathway draws on media theory, critical theory, continental philosophy, science and technology studies, gender studies, critical race studies, the posthumanities, software studies and cultural studies to diagnose our present digital condition.

Pathway 2 (Image Making) is a theory and practice programme. Alongside engaging with digital media theory you will work with one or more of the following – animation, photography, video and other forms of moving image – to create installations, apps and single/multi-screen work that is responsive to a continually changing, and conceptually understood, digital landscape.

Pathway 3 (Critical Computing) is a theory and practice programme where you will interrogate technical objects through critically learning a technical subject and by collectively criticising the results and processes involved – for example, by studying the racialisation of algorithms or exploring non-proprietary databases, operating systems, software licensing, programming, networking and open hardware in the shape of physical computing.

Skills

We provide graduates with skills that are cutting edge: in the critical analysis and/or creative production of digital media; in the disciplinary knowledge and conceptual frameworks necessary for current and future forms of media and technology; in the awareness of how digital media and technologies are re-shaping society from the ways we communicate (through social media and web 2.0) to the increasingly ‘smart’ environments in which we live.

Careers

Our programme provides a theory and practice pathway and prepares students for work in the following areas:

• media and creative industries; advertising, marketing and PR (graduates of the MA Digital Media have found work with Virgin Media, Google, the BBC and other leading organisations worldwide)
• research and academia (graduates from this programme have gone on to study for PhD degrees in higher education institutions around the world and also here with us)
• media production and new media art (graduates have exhibited, published and produced work in photography, journalism, TV, documentary, film and multimedia).