Digital Media: Critical Studies MA

UCL (University College London)

The Digital Media: Critical Studies MA is for students who wish to develop an advanced critical and analytical understanding of the current, rapidly changing digital media landscape. Students explore media and cultural studies theories and methods relevant to the analysis of digital media texts, audiences, users, technologies, infrastructures, and cultures. Optional modules offer students the opportunity to focus on specific topics, such as digital games, gender in digital media, and mobile media in more depth. During their final term, students undertake independent research on a relevant topic of their choice with the support of a supervisor. Our students cultivate their own critical voice to analyse various aspects of digital media culture, underpinned by intellectual curiosity, autonomy, and integrity. They engage with current key theories and debates in media and cultural studies, particularly in relation to digital media, and apply qualitative research methods to critically and ethically analyse how media constructs, represents, and shapes social practices, cultural norms, identities, and power relations. Our core modules give a shared, in-depth foundation on key concepts in today’s digital media theory and key considerations in designing digital media research. Our optional modules offer a range of critical perspectives on digital media, including how gender takes shape through media contents, technologies, and practices; how to make sense of digital games, game industry, and player cultures; and how mobile media participate in shaping our ways of being, feeling and moving in the world from intimate everyday interactions to large-scale political changes. Finally, by conducting their own independent research with the support of a supervisor, our students are able to focus on their own areas of interest, underscored by a nuanced understanding of digital media phenomena in their complex sociocultural contexts. The Digital Media: Critical Studies MA is for students who wish to investigate the social, textual and cultural aspects of digital media. It will be suitable for those interested in the fields of Media Studies and Cultural Studies, and in a professional or academic career in culture, the arts, communication or media. This programme is also available on a modular (flexible) basis, with a duration of 5 calendar years.