Sociology (Digital Media) BSc

Compulsory

• Digital Media Landscapes

  The module introduces students to a range of concepts and issues that underpin the ways in which everyday social life is shaped by the digital technologies. Students will examine the implications of digital media environments for societies and journalism. Focus is placed upon the relationship between states, societies and the media in the digital age.

• Global London

  Through focusing on the concept of ‘Global London’, this module shows you how the social sciences can enable you to better understand their lived social environment. It introduces you to the techniques used by a range of disciplines within social science for gaining and validating knowledge of the social world and equips you with an academic skill base appropriate for university study. 

• Global Sociology

  This module will survey current debates around the idea of global sociology. It will address contrasting theories of global sociology as well as specific issues raised by the subject including the debates around the idea of sociology as a global discipline as opposed to one that takes nation-states as its starting point of analysis.

• Key Ideas in Media

  This module provides an introduction to the main theories, approaches and concepts in media studies. It will introduce you to the critical canon, as well as drawing on case studies to illustrate key topics in media and research. Key Ideas in Media will provide you with a firm conceptual and methodological foundation in communication and media studies focusing on themes of power, identity and culture.

• Key Ideas in Sociology

  Key themes in sociology are explored through theoretical and empirical analysis. You will do this by examining some of the most important ideas of leading sociologists and critically engage with their theories through empirical illustrations. 

• Power, Inequality and Society

  This module unpacks the definition, origins, evolution and trajectory of inequality in society through multiple empirical and theoretical angles. It also examines different manifestations of inequality including gender, income, educational and intersectional dynamics. Finally, it explores social mobility and how the state, charities as well as labour groups work towards redistribution of opportunities and resources.

Compulsory

• Digital Culture

  This module considers the shape of new media technologies such as iPhones – it explores how new developments in media technology have changed the basis of contemporary social life and culture. This module will examine some of the key transformations that are taking place through digital culture.

• Global Communication

  Examine the ways in which the globalisation of communication has transformed social, political, and economic relations. The following themes will be addressed in this module: the state, economy, power, globalisation, nationalism, identity, digitisation, culture and consumerism, media markets, public relations and politics, and political economy of communication.

• Researching Your World

  This module provides an advanced understanding of research methodologies, with a particular focus on data analysis. Equipping students with an understanding and appreciation of the important theoretical paradigms that underpin qualitative and quantitative social and communications research traditions. Furnishing students with the tools and skills required to conduct and evaluate their own empirical social and communications research.

Optional

• Body, Media and Society

  In this module we will examine many different aspects of embodiment and bodies in society, with a focus on the role of media in representing, stereotyping, and medicalising different kinds of bodies. 

• Colonialism, Migration and Global Racism

  This module explores the concept, meaning and practices of ‘race’, ethnicity, racialization, and global racisms. It identifies how ‘race’ and racism have evolved over time, and in different contexts - both nationally in the contemporary UK as well as in other parts of the world. 

• Gangs, Street Culture and Crime

  Students will be introduced to the history and the various theoretical debates surrounding the nature of street gangs and street cultural formation. Using a wide range of criminological and empirical research, the causes of gangs and street culture, and the responses to this global phenomenon will be considered.

• Gender, Sexuality and Feminism

  This module will introduce students to core ideas in feminism via the key concepts of gender and sexuality. It will develop students’ understandings of social structures, human cultures, and economic inequalities and political relationships. The course will offer theoretical tools and historical insights into gendered, feminised, and sexualised socio-cultural worlds.

• Media Genres

  This module will introduce you to the workings of various media genres and how these relate to themes of power, identify and culture and wider societal contexts.

• Popular Culture and Creative Industries

  This module explores how meanings are developed through contemporary cultural representations, practices and processes, with a focus on creativity and the creative industries sector. It examines popular culture and the rise of the creative and cultural sector in late modernity drawing on relevant sociological, media and cultural studies debates and theories. 

• Sociology of Everyday Life: Issues in Contemporary Culture

  In this module you will consider the meanings of ordinary, ‘everyday’ processes and actions in society, by examining what everyday life consists of and the relevant academic debates and theories around it. The module will encourage you to reflect on your own everyday life through the lense of power, identity and gender in wider socio-cultural contexts.

Compulsory

• Advanced Research Skills for Sociology and Communication

Optional

• Apocalypse! Crisis and Society

  Explore the social & political significance of representations of national and global crises, and public perceptions of controversies. Students analyse dystopian popular and scientific discourses that dwell on disorder and catastrophe. Indicative content includes risk, uncertainty, globalisation, the environment, disease, capitalism. Public understanding, perception and engagement with popular and scientific controversies and notions of crisis.

• Cities, Power and Social Change

  An introduction to urban sociology and will develop the students understanding of urban development, cultures, and representation. The course will offer theoretical tools and provide practical applications for the relationship between space, culture, and social life in contemporary cities.

• Comedy, the Media & Society

  This module provides a serious critical consideration of the role of comedy in contemporary media and society. This role is explored in relation to comedy’s institutional, historical, social and textual conventions. The module also explores comedy as it exists in a broad range of texts and examines the role of comedy in the construction and transmission of social difference and issues of identity.

• Digital Audiences and Identities

  This module provides students with a critical overview of key debates about media audiences and identities. Students will engage with key contemporary debates about media influence and be able to apply theoretical concepts to a range of contemporary sites.

• Digital Media Career Development

  This module will provide students with the opportunity to gain a critical overview of working in the media and cultural industries from direct encounters with creative industry professionals, companies or institutions. It will support students’ understanding of, competence and confidence in working independently in a professional manner appropriate to the media and cultural industries.

• Global Migration

  Equips students with an understanding of the key concepts in global migration including the causes and consequences of migration, national and international responses to migration and the diversity of migrant flows within a global context, using cases from both Global North and Global South contexts.

• Lawyers, Guns and Money: Making the modern world-system

  This module will explore issues raised by historical and political sociology regarding the development of the modern world-system. In particular the course will focus upon the rise to dominance of Europe in the building of the modern world-system and the explanations offered for this.

• Making the Social

  An introduction to core concepts in social theory. The emphasis is on concepts through which students can relate to the worlds they inhabit and the lives they live, connecting these to a broad canvas: the diversity of social existence and the sweep of human history. The focus is on basic building blocks of social existence.

• Media Empires

  The module explores the role played by the media in the development and maintenance of ‘empires’, and examines how we can understand media ‘empires’ via key concepts such as ‘media/cultural imperialism’, ‘public diplomacy’ and ‘intellectual property rights’.

• Media, Social Movements and Change

  The module provides students with an understanding of how social movements occur, succeed, or fail in bringing social and/or political change. By focusing on empirical cases, students will study the use of old and new media tools, the role of leaders and collective identity formation during the social movements, as well as governmental and international responses to these developments.

• Social Media and Society

  This module will enable students to critically engage and analyse the historical and current impact of social media on social relations and contemporary culture. It will allow students to develop a critical understanding of social media in the context of broader changes in the media landscape, and how it impacts identity, power and everyday life.

• Social Reproduction and Care

  This module aims to introduce students to theoretical debates in feminism about social reproduction and care. It will offer a broad history of such debates and update these with new theoretical interventions in this field that have arisen in recent times, particularly in the context of the pandemic.

• Sociological Career Development

  This module will provide students with a critical overview of working in industries that draw on or are connected with sociological knowledge from direct encounters with industry professionals, companies or institutions. Drawing on a variety of formats, the module will support students’ understanding of, competence and confidence in working independently in a professional manner appropriate to ‘sociological’ industries.

• Sociology (Digital Media) Dissertation
• Sociology (Digital Media) Major Final Project