Programme Structure

The programme is in three parts; the core program, options (where students can devise their own specializations), and the dissertation. The themes covered may vary from year to year, depending on research developments and staff availability.

Core Courses

Global Media & Transnational Communications I: Orientations

This first core course (30 CATs) maps out a conceptual grid for the programme from a bird's eyeview . Topics covered include: 

• different ways to understand globalization, transnationalism, and the nation-state
• ICT & Development at the UN
• PR & Advertising before and since the web
• cinema and its global affect
• new media, revolution, and the Middle East
• non-western television flows
• cosmopolitan hopes and 'postnational' realities in the wake of 9/11
• the global cultural politics of music-making in a digital age of reproduction

Global Media & Transnational Communications II: Further Explorations

The second core course (30 CATs) delves more deeply into these issues and introduces another level of study from close-up. For instance:

• postcolonial and diasporic media/virtual communities
• practices of everyday life online and in converging media-spaces
• power vectors of race/ethnicity, sex/gender, class/status in virtual and embodied worlds
• struggles for ownership and control of the internet
• human rights, media governance, and digital activism
• censorship and surveillance in cyberspace
• after (post)modernism in a post-Web 2.0 age
• social media, belonging, and power relations
• new media - new maps and how we see the world

Research Skills

Along with the two Core Courses and as an integral part of successfully completing the Dissertation component, students take part in a two-term Research Skills Module. Here we cover topics such as: 

• research design and planning - from start to finish
• deciding on a topic/research question formulation
• finding and using the literature at an advanced level
• selected data-gathering and analysis across the arts, humanities, and social science spectrum
• academic thinking, writing, and presentation
• citation formats, ethics that matter, and the theory-method relationship from several angles
• coping with stress, being creative, and originality

By term’s end students will be fine-tuning their individual research projects, contributing to our study of these themes in class presentations.

Options

Students may choose options worth a total of 60 CATS (usually two, 30 CATS each; up to four, 15 CATS each) from those available at the start of the new academic year from within the Media and Communications Department as well as other departments. Option availability are subject to change from year to year and from department to department. An overview of MA-level courses currently taught in the department and across the college is available through the respective web-pages. The Options Handbook is available to incoming students in Enrolment Week.

Outcomes

The MA degree is awarded on the successful completion of all the above mandatory (60 CATS in total), optional elements (60 CATS in total), and a research dissertation (60 CATs).