Media Communications

You'll develop practical skills across marketing, creative campaign strategy, social media management, web design, journalism, and political media-making, informed by core sociological theory and concepts including power, inequality, identity, and institutions. Alongside social research methods, you'll explore contemporary issues such as health inequalities, digital life, gender, race, and class, bringing sociological insight to bear on the media you make and the audiences you reach.

You’ll be doing a lot of significant project work. You'll collaborate with industry partners on cross-platform campaigns, feature articles, and activist media projects while working with external organisations including community arts groups, healthcare providers, and refugee and youth support services to see how sociological ideas apply in practice.

Year one

You’ll gain grounding in key sociological ideas to support your development of practical media skills in research, marketing, social media management, creative campaign strategy, and journalism. Media and communications theory will support analytical and critical thinking and you'll be introduced to sociological ideas as practical tools for analysing real-world problems, giving you a richer understanding of the communities and your media work will engage with.

Year two

You'll explore marketing, influencer, and branding practices, develop web design skills, examine grassroots community media, and develop cross-platform communication strategies, deepening your awareness of media ethics along the way. Your sociological studies shift towards debate, critical thinking, and analytical engagement with social problems so that the ethical questions you encounter in media practice have deeper real world context.

An optional Professional Placement Year between your second and final year gives you the chance to gain extended experience in the workplace.

Year three

You'll join The Studio, our innovation hub for creative media technology, collaborating with arts and cultural organisations on live projects exploring immersive media, feminist activism, the impacts of AI on society, and public exhibitions. Supported by the sociological grounding you've built throughout the course, you'll become a communications professional with a vision for a more inclusive media landscape, applying sociological ideas to complex social problems through community engagement, digital or practice-based projects, or extended independent inquiry, evaluating interventions and developing ethical and sustainable responses.

At BSU, our courses are designed to equip our graduates with the knowledge and skills they’ll need for the real world. To do this, we are continually improving our courses by responding to feedback from students and other stakeholders. This may mean changes may be made to the curriculum. You’ll always be given notice of any such changes.

For more information on how we approach such changes at the university, please read our policies on

• Suspensions and Discontinuations
• Programme modifications.

You'll produce the kind of media content that defines the 'communications for change' ethos, including creative media campaigns, marketing strategies, investigative journalism features, political media-making, social media content, and PR packs, all shaped by the critical and sociological perspectives developed across the course. Sociology assessment methods include essays, case studies, reports, policy briefings, practice-based projects, Wiki pages, critical reflections, and practical work experience, with variation depending on modules chosen.

You'll be taught by a team of world-leading researchers and creative media practitioners. Lectures set out key practices and emerging trends; workshops focus on skills including web design and media branding; and in project labs you'll work with staff and students to co-design larger campaigns.

Teaching across both subjects is delivered through lectures, student-led seminars, and practical workshops, with academic support built in through regular contact with teaching staff, structured feedback on assessments, and opportunities for reflection and development.

To find out more about how we teach and how you'll learn, please read our information on Your Learning and Teaching at BSU.

All final-year Media Communications students join The Studio, Bath Spa University’s city-centre hub for creative media technology, where final-year modules are delivered in collaboration with industry partners. Recent students have produced articles, campaigns, strategy reports and social media content for organisations including Bathscape, Voices, Stroud Film Festival, Great State, the Victoria Art Gallery and Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein in Bath. 

In Sociology, the programme has established links with external organisations including Bristol Refugee Rights, Stand Against Racism and Inequality, schools and colleges, and local youth and community support services. These partnerships support volunteering, applied projects, placements and community engagement throughout the degree.

Graduates of this combined degree are well placed for a wide range of roles that value creative skill and social insight. Media Communications prepares you for careers in advertising, branding and marketing, social media management, campaign design, PR, journalism, web and graphic design, and creative strategy.

Sociology prepares you for roles in policy and research, community and youth work, health and wellbeing services, education and outreach, charity and NGO work, local government, equality and inclusion, and the criminal justice and social care sectors.

As part of your degree, you could study abroad on a placement at one of Bath Spa’s partner universities.

If you’re a full-time undergraduate student starting your first year at Bath Spa University, you can apply for the Certificate in Global Citizenship, which you’ll study alongside your degree.

You’ll gain global awareness and add an international dimension to your student experience, and funding is available. On successful completion of the programme, you’ll be awarded a Certificate in Global Citizenship. This is in addition to your degree; it doesn’t change your degree title or results.

The Professional Placement Year (PPY) 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 PPY, you'll work to identify roles of interest and secure a placement. The Placements Team will support through timetabled sessions and 1:1 appointments.

As well as completing a minimum of 900 placement hours, you will complete two assessments demonstrating your skill development, growth in professional behaviours and how the PPY has impacted your future career aspirations.

As a BA Media Communications student you’ll benefit from access to comprehensive digital workshops and specialist art and design facilities, including:

• Our student service point at Locksbrook where you can purchase subsidised art and design materials, hire out equipment for free and collect Library resources
• Access to our well-stocked Library at Newton Park
• Access to specialist technical workshops across all of art and design
• Access to studio space where you can work on projects and refine your practice
• The Studio in Bath
• Virtual Learning Environment

In Media Communications you’ll benefit from comprehensive digital workshops and specialist art and design facilities, including studio space, free equipment loan via SISO (multi-camera TV studios, digital cameras, field recorders and more), and a student service point at Locksbrook where you can purchase subsidised materials and collect library resources. Library collections include more than 450 journal subscriptions, 18,000 books and 3,000 eBooks, plus digital collections including Film and Television Literature Index, Rock’s Backpages, and Box of Broadcasts – an archive of over two million off-air television broadcasts. 

In Sociology You’ll have access to modern teaching spaces, digital learning platforms, and library resources supporting sociological study, research and applied learning. Online systems provide access to academic journals, datasets and specialist resources used across the social sciences. Teaching is delivered by a research-active and practice-engaged team with expertise across social inequality, health and wellbeing, digital society, culture and media, governance and policy, community engagement, and social justice. Guest speakers and practitioners contribute throughout the degree, connecting sociological ideas to professional practice and future careers.