Courses and structure

Over the period of the degree you take courses to the value of 360 credits, 120 credits in each year.

Year 1

You take two Sociology Core Courses:

• Critical Readings: The Emergence of Sociological Rationality (30 credits)
  
• Modern Knowledge, Modern Power (30 credits)
  

and four Media and Communications courses:

• Media History and Politics (15 credits)
  Historical development of the British media, and their role in the development of modern Britain focusing on the way in which power is concentrated and organised around media ownership and production. Assessed by: one two-hour seen written paper.

• Culture and Cultural Studies (15 credits)
  Introduction to debates around the term ‘culture’, including questions of ‘high’ and ‘mass’ culture, and the development of British cultural studies. Assessed by: one two-hour unseen written paper.

• Key Debates in Media Studies (15 credits)
  This course focuses on important debates concerning media power and mediated identity. Assessed by: 2,000-word essay.

• Media Texts: Interpretation and Sensation (15 credits)
  This course focuses on the formal address of media texts as a means of examining the way in which they make meaning. Assessed by: 2,000-word project.

Please note: there are no media practice courses in Year 1.

Year 2

In Year 2 you take three Sociology Core Courses:

• Central Issues in Sociological Analysis (15 credits)
• Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences (15 credits)
• Sociology of Culture and Communication (15 credits)

plus:

• one Sociology Option

and two Media and Communications courses from:

• Culture Society and the Individual
• Communications Psychology and Experience
• Media Economy and Society

plus a media practice course:

• Media Production Option 1 (30 credits)
  An introduction to media production in one of the practice options offered each year by the Department. Production skills are applied in the creation of small-scale projects.

Year 3

You write an 8,000-word Dissertation on a topic of your own choice, supervised by a personal tutor (30 credits). This enables you to develop an area of interest through personal study.

You also choose two Sociology Options (worth 15 credits each).

You also take two Media and Communications options. These could include:

• Political Economy of the Mass Media (15 credits)
  
• Structure of Contemporary Political Communications (15 credits)
  
• Media Audiences and Media Geographies (15 credits)
  
• Media Ethnicity and Nation (15 credits)
  
• Music as Communication and Creative Practice (15 credits)
  
• Contemporary Cultural Practice (15 credits)
  
• Explorations in World Cinema (15 credits)
  

plus a media practice course:

• Media Production Option 2 (30 credits)
  An introduction to media production in a different area to the one you studied in the second year. You apply production skills in the creation of small-scale projects, and develop critical skills through the analysis of examples and of work produced in each area

Teaching

Teaching is by lectures, seminars, workshops and tutorials. You're assigned a personal tutor, who also acts as an academic tutor. Tutors oversee your academic work and progress over the year. In the third year, most students undertake a Dissertation on a subject of their choice, for which they receive supervision.

Assessment

Coursework, extended essays, reports, practical work, and seen and unseen written examinations.

Skills and careers

Skills

Some of the skills you'll develop during a Media and Communications degree include:

• critical and analytical skills
• proficiency in assessing evidence and in expressing ideas clearly
• ability to bring together insights from a range of subjects
• IT skills
• communications skills
• journalistic and creative writing skills

Careers

Alumni from the Department have gone on to careers in television, radio, the press, publishing, film-making, advertising, marketing and public relations, web design, teaching and research, advertising, arts and administration, business and industry, European Union private sector management and personnel work, and many more both in the media industries and elsewhere.

• Find out more about employability at Goldsmiths
• Our alumni

About the departments

The Department of Media & Communications

The Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths is one of the UK’s leaders in the field of media theory and media practice.

This reputation teamed with a thriving research and postgraduate community makes Goldsmiths a lively and challenging place to study Media and Communications.

The Department offers a range of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and has over 700 students.

Key facts

• An internationally recognised Department. The 2008 RAE exercise places Goldsmiths’ Department of Media and Communications among the top four in the country for this subject area. 80% of work submitted fell within the two highest bands in the new system – that is to say ‘World Leading’ and ‘Internationally Excellent’.
• Commitment to teaching of the highest standard resulting in a score of 22/24 in the Teaching Quality Assessment Exercise, with an emphasis on high quality lectures and small group work.
• Teaching is led by research active staff including some of the leading names in media, cultural and communications studies.
• We concentrate on high quality lectures, small group work and all our teaching takes place on one site.
• We attract students from a wide range of backgrounds – mature students, international students, students from south-east London and from all over Britain. We welcome every student’s contribution to the Department.
• Research strengths include: the political economy of the mass media, transnational media, political communications, popular music, new technologies, new media economies and cultures, news journalism, film, feminism, critical psychology, contemporary British art and the fashion industry.

Facilities

The Department has up-to-date facilities in all of its media areas, and aims to provide practice facilities that emulate current industry use.

These include:

• digital and analogue acquisition for time-based media and photography
• radio and TV Studios
• photography studios
• digital video and audio editing
• ENPS facility
• animation and image manipulation software and hardware
• traditional darkrooms
• computer rooms for student production

Rutherford Building

The audio-visual collection held on campus in the (RB) has an exceptionally good music section and thousands of videos and DVDs to supplement those shown on the programme. Long opening hours mean that you can be flexible in terms of when you choose to study.

New Academic Building

Opened in September 2010 and located at the top of the College Green, the New Academic Building is the new centre for the Department of Media and Communications. The new facilities maximise students’ ability to develop their skills through modern technological and purpose built accommodation and equipment. The new building houses a large lecture theatre, meeting spaces and a cafe with outside seating.

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The Department of Sociology

The Department of Sociology is nationally and internationally recognised as one of the UK’s leading university departments in the discipline. We have an excellent reputation for teaching and achieved the highest rankings for research in the latest Research Assessment Exercise 2008, coming joint top in the UK. We play a key role in the development of contemporary social and cultural understandings and innovative social science research methodologies.

Research strengths

Our research strengths are wide and include:

• inequalities
• sociological theory
• art and literature; education
• culture and communication
• science, technology and health
• globalisation, cities and economic life
• racism, religion and nationalism
• social and political movements
• citizenship
• design
• class
• the body and society
• new media and the internet
• psychoanalysis
• human rights, law and citizenship
• visual sociology

These research interests are reflected in our teaching, especially in the second and third years of our undergraduate degrees.

Staff

The Department has 28 full-time academic staff, including nine Professors and nine professional staff, as well as part-time and research staff. We also have a number of visiting tutors. We publish widely in the form of books, contributions to journals, and press articles. This means that you'll be taught by staff who are actually shaping the discipline.

Find out more about staff in the Department of Sociology.

Facilities

In addition to extensive computing facilities, the Department co-ordinates a programme of talks featuring visiting lecturers from other universities. These talks cover specific areas of interest, and supplement events held by academics within the Department.

Student and graduate profiles

"Goldsmiths was the most inspiring, exciting place to study – an incredibly creative atmosphere. The Department of Media and Communications put me in front of lecturers who were writing the books, doing the cutting-edge thinking and still working in the media. They also gave me the space to be a free-thinker. I owe so much to the place – I really found myself there.

I didn’t really enjoy or excel at school, and never even managed an A grade until I came to Goldsmiths. In spite of that, I came away with a First in my degree after three years of study. If you want to work in the media, it’s your drive and determination that count the most, not the degree you do. But the Media course at Goldsmiths gave me unique insights into the industry I now work in – insights that I still use 15 years later."

Keir Simmons, UK Editor of the National ITV News
(BA Media & Sociology, graduated 1994)

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"I’m from China, and have been studying in the UK for more than five years. I am a third year student studying BA in Media and Sociology now. I have chosen this course because Media and Communications at Goldsmiths is one of the best courses in the UK; I also believe that this course equipped me with the skills necessary for my career development. Taking into account the teaching quality, the facilities and the support structure, Goldsmiths offers best value for the tuition fee."

Qian, BA Media & Sociology