Film and Screen Studies and Media Communications

Learn to communicate new ideas to audiences – locally and globally. Through academic and practice-based research, you’ll rethink multi-platform media, gender representation and game and music cultures as a force for change in society.

Explore how global media industries shape everyday culture. Examine why the media represents local communities the way that it does, and challenge the ways that social media influences how we perceive, consume and participate in daily life.

Partnering with prominent community and industry groups in Bath and beyond, you’ll build up a portfolio of research and research-led media artefacts, working towards a final-year creative project that communicates original ideas to an industry audience.

Year one: Media audiences and representations
Our Media Communications degree modules equip you with the essential critical toolkit for understanding and analysing today’s media. You’ll examine media fandom, popular cultures and media representations, and use politically motivated tools to gain practical media-making skills. You’ll be introduced to key methods in media research through a series of case studies including gender in the media, television audiences, journalism, media preservation and music cultures.

Year two: Media industries and creative practices
You’ll examine global media industries, questioning – for example – how the media transcends the borders of platforms, cultures and countries. Alongside this, you’ll study the impacts of a promotional media culture on everything from production to consumption. You’ll have the opportunity to develop your skills in digital and cross-platform media-making, while further examining these themes in relation to more specific areas, such as stardom and celebrity, music, digital cultures and participatory media.

Year three: Making media making change
We'll encourage you to specialise in your passion, and to develop independent research and practice. This takes the form of a dissertation, but with you also transforming your research into an online media project that benefits a wider audience or industry of your choice. This project is complemented by specialist modules in feminism in film, digital innovation and enterprise, music journalism and video games.

Our Media Communications degree is about developing the academic and creative skills to examine, challenge and transform today’s most important issues through the power of media communications. Assessments therefore range from research portfolios, transmedia presentations, essays and reflective journals, interactive digital marketing campaigns, political media-making artefacts and video essays, and blogs, presentations and websites. You’ll also learn through the creation of collaborative projects, working on live briefs with local media partners.

Our teaching is driven by the research specialisms and expertise of our academics, who are all world-leading scholars in their respective fields within Media Communications. We have particular expertise in multi-platform media, gender and representation, film and television industries, game and music cultures, and emerging digital technologies.

Lectures set out broad themes and issues, while seminars stimulate discussion and encourage student debate. Individual tutorials provide an opportunity to discuss your work with tutors on a one-to-one basis.

You’ll also learn via workshops devoted to particular skills such as digital media branding, and in project labs you’ll work with staff and students to develop larger media campaigns.

Our Media Communications degree has bespoke work placement opportunities with Future Publishing and Great State. At various points throughout the course, you’ll complete your assignments by working with local media organisations. Recent partnerships for students have included The F-Word online magazine, Bathscape, the Stroud Film Festival and the Bath Royal Scientific and Literary Institution.

Our Media Communications academics support Bristol+Bath Creative R+D, a £6.8 million initiative across the south west that supports the future development of the creative industries. In your second year you’ll have the chance to apply to be part of its dynamic work placement programme.

You’ll also have the opportunity to engage with The Studio at Palace Yard Mews, Bath Spa University’s city centre home for innovation, research and enterprise. The Studio is Bath’s first enterprise and innovation hub to focus on creative media technology.

Our Media Communications degree at Bath Spa is ideal for aspiring:

• Media researchers and creative strategists
• Advertisers and digital media marketers
• Social media and branding creatives
• Academics and media policy-makers of the future.

Our Media Communications graduates have gone into digital marketing, social media, publishing, education, PR, media policy and more, and have been employed by companies including Komedia, Conversation Creation, Apollo Strategic Communications and Cognisess.

Each year we award The Centre for Media Research Student Award to a final-year student whose dissertation shows exemplary quality, scope and ambition, and which has been creatively reimagined to engage and benefit a wider industry audience

This optional placement year provides you with the opportunity to identify, apply for and secure professional experience, normally comprising one to three placements over a minimum of nine months. Successful completion of this module will demonstrate your ability to secure and sustain graduate-level employment.

By completing the module, you'll be entitled to the addition of 'with Professional Placement Year' to your degree title.

Before your Professional Placement Year, you'll work to secure your placement, constructing a development plan with your module leader and your placement coordinator from our Careers and Employability team.

On your return to University for your final year, you'll submit your Placement Portfolio, detailing your development on your placement.

The Media Communications course is based at our Newton Park campus. You'll have access to excellent facilities including:

• Commons building
• Mac labs
• TV studios
• Virtual Learning Environment.

• Library collections directly relevant to the Media Communications course include more than 450 journal subscriptions, 18,000 books and 3,000 e-books. The Library’s extensive digital collections include Film and Television Literature Index, Rock's Backpages, and Box of Broadcasts, an archive of over two million off-air television broadcasts. Library resources for the course are underpinned by our Subject Librarian, who provides subject-specific support and a defined point of contact for research enquiries.

• The Careers team have very close links with the media and creative industries in Bath and Bristol, and organise bespoke opportunities for you to engage with media employers, including networking sessions and bus tours visiting organisations.

• The Writing and Learning Centre provides continuous support for your academic work, providing feedback on written drafts and running sessions on academic writing.