BA (Hons)
Journalism

This module is designed as a practical introduction for journalism students to central and local government, the major offices of state, the public and private sectors and organisations and institutions such as the police, the NHS, utilities providers and major corporations.

You’ll learn how government bodies and corporations operate, how public relations and press offices work and where journalists can look for information. You’ll discover the core principles of basic journalistic research in these sectors.

This module will provide an introduction to the digital methods used in day-to-day journalism. It will ensure you have an understanding of the computer literacy essential to digital journalism. You’ll be taught a lab primer, in which you will be shown how to use an iMac and Mac OS. You’ll then learn how to acquire and edit digital images and how to use content management systems, such as WordPress. These backend publishing tools are used across the journalism industry.

Other sessions will cover how to use search engines and web analytics. You’ll also be given an introduction to web design and how writing for online differs to print.

This module will introduce you to the basics of online journalism. We’ll focus on key fact-checking, news gathering and writing skills along with building a critical understanding of news.

You’ll learn how to structure news stories, how to source appropriate multimedia content to include in such stories and make them ready for online publishing. You’ll also be introduced to court reporting, subediting, interviewing and writing features.

Because it provides most of our information about public affairs, news is considered to be a vital element of a democratic society. But as news comes to us through more channels and in more forms than ever before, journalists are under increasing pressure from different forces and institutions that wish to determine what the public reads as ‘news’.

This module will take a broad view of what constitutes news and the debates about news. By taking a sociological perspective, we’ll focus on the working practices of those who manufacture the world’s news, and the broader social context of news production. We’ll consider news stories as the outcome of particular social practices and will examine how news is produced in the press, in broadcasting and other contexts.

Starting with key theoretical issues relating to news content and news production, we’ll consider how the product we call “news” is created, by examining the working practices of journalists, the relationship between journalists and their sources, the professional codes and values of journalism, and the institutional environment in which journalists work. The module examines issues of race, gender, and equality in news journalism, and considers audience reception of the news.

How does the media shape our outlook on life, and the way we think about our place in the world? What influence do the media have over us and how might we understand, access, or influence these networks of power? What governs the interactions between the media and citizens? Key Debates in Media Studies investigates various approaches to these questions focusing on two main themes: control and resistance.

In this module, we’ll focus on:

• Issues of media control, structure and policy, and the ways in which media are ‘framed’ for us by powerful interests.
• The ways in which people are active in relation to media: producing their own meanings, resisting dominant structures, and creating new types of content.

In this module, you will learn the techniques being employed by working journalists in the 21st century.

You will also be taught how to create video content using a mobile phone, use a mobile phone to record sound and use the phone to edit content and ultimately produced a piece of multimedia journalism

This module aims to build on the skills you learned in the previous term. You’ll be taught how internet technologies are used in journalism and web production and given a detailed introduction to HTML5 and CSS3.

In later workshops, you’ll have an introduction to data journalism. You’ll learn how to find data online using advanced search skills and ONS/ government data sets. You’ll also examine the use of Excel and Google sheets in data scraping and will be given an introduction to scraping tools used in the practice. We’ll critically engage with the practice of data collection, and you’ll be expected to understand how data is collected, and to what end – for example it could be used to enforce power structures or to uphold political ideologies.

A large amount of data is available in electronic resources and has become increasingly important in modern reporting. This module will provide a broad introduction to techniques for gathering, managing, analysing, and presenting data from electronic sources, such as databases and the internet.
 
We’ll cover both fundamental ideas and principles for analysis and visualisation as well the use of some of the most important currently available tools. Data and topics selected for practical sessions reflect current issues in the news and are structured to give you vocational skills that can be used in contemporary professional digital media practices.

During this module we’ll consider the social, commercial, political, and technical structures in which journalism is embedded. We’ll also explore how sociologists understand the role of journalism in society.

Does ownership define what news is prioritised, or are journalists free agents? Are global news flows still dominated by Western values and what is the impact of digital platforms on global flows? What is the role of publicly owned media on the one hand and advertising dominated commercial media and platforms on the other? How do commercial imperatives influence professional and ethical values and regulation? Finally, we’ll consider emerging structures for the future of journalism.

The module investigates the nature of media law and ethical regulation for media practitioners primarily in the UK, but with references to the experiences of media communicators in other countries. You’ll be directed towards an analysis of media law as it exists, the ethical debates concerning what the law ought to be, and the historical development of legal and regulatory controls of communication.

You’ll learn about:

• media jurisprudence - the study of the philosophy of media law
• media ethicology - the study of the knowledge of ethics/morality in media communication
• media ethicism - the belief systems in the political context that influence journalistic conduct and content

The module evaluates media law and regulation in terms of its social and cultural context. The module includes discussion of multi-media examples of media communication considered legally and/or morally problematic. Through this module, you’ll be able to understand and show awareness of key legal, ethical and regulatory issues relevant to media, such as reporting abroad, different jurisdictions, the use of social media and online content, coverage of traumatic events, violence and death, and more.

This module explores the function, impact and status of news in an increasingly "deterritorialised" and volatile globalised media environment. The module will cover a comparative study of different news media systems in the world and examine global news flows together with technological, institutional and professional issues in international news production.

We’ll explore the news media’s relationship with international institutions and non-state actors, including NGOs, activists and whistleblowers. We’ll investigate access to news in the Information Age and the extent to which audiences might constitute alternative news networks and a putative globalised public sphere. You’ll learn how new digital technologies have transformed the way news is made, disseminated and consumed.

The module provides a critical consideration of the economics, culture, politics, and sociology of news in a globalised context and examines fundamental issues, theories and developing news practices. This module aims to enable you to understand the impact of rapid technological changes, the globalised nature of news and implications for the future of the news media.

This module will equip you to create features in journalism. Teaching will be in the form of presentations and writing workshops. You’ll learn the difference between news and features, the varying forms of features and conventions of features journalism.

You’ll learn to research an audience, develop feature ideas and pitch to editors. Emphasis will also be placed on writing and editing skills.

The module aims to revisit and deepen basic skills in shooting and in editing using Premiere Pro video editing software. Through the module, you’ll become more confident in planning and structuring a video news package.

You’ll learn to conduct effective video interviewing in order to obtain strong footage. We’ll discuss the importance of cross-platform working and teach you the skills to repurpose content for a variety of platforms.

This module introduces you to the practice of local news gathering, reporting, and editing on the Departments’ live news website EastLondonLines. You’ll build on, and improve on your news, feature writing, video, and digital skills. You’ll be taught in groups and learn through the practice of journalism and through the feedback from your tutors.

The first four weeks of term are spent preparing to work on Eastlondonlines, offering you refreshers on news writing, interviewing, using social media for journalistic purposes and SEO. The remainder of the term sees the students divided into groups and given key editorial management roles to run the site with the support of the two tutors. On a rota basis, students act as news editors, picture editors, social media editors and sub-editors and are expected to direct their peers and manage all content, produced by the rest of the group.

You’ll be expected to work on a self-directed basis outside workshop hours during this period. You’ll be assessed on a portfolio of assignments and published work, and your performance during editorial control periods.

As the final practical project for this course, this module aims to build on the skills and theory learned across the BA Journalism programme. Between working on the local news site EastLondonLines and producing a multimedia digital long-read, you’ll look at ways to further your journalistic skills by taking on more complex, ambitious stories and by demonstrating original reporting.

You’ll also critically engage with and reflect on your own practical work through the lens of journalism theory.

This module explores intelligent arts journalism in the digital era. Within the unit, we’ll be tackling creative cultural writing across a variety of fields, most notably music, fashion, film, and TV, developing your skills in reviewing, interviewing and feature writing.

With guests from the industry to further your experiences, we’ll also examine the relevant skills of a freelance journalist, across pitching and personal branding, culminating in a portfolio of assessment pieces due for submission at the end of the unit.

This module offers an introduction to practical research methodologies and their deployment in various different specialist journalism fields. The module evolves a critical approach to the many different sources journalists use, the compromises involved and constraints within which they work.

Subjects to be covered can change according to outside events and the availability of professional speakers, but are expected include sourcing and using data, the use of the Freedom of Information Act, investigative journalism, economic and political journalism, the problems and pitfalls of reporting conflict, managing human, particularly vulnerable, human sources.

This module examines the actors and communication processes involved in contemporary political communication. It combines theoretical insights and empirical information from the fields of media studies, journalism, sociology and political science. It mainly focuses on democracies, particularly in the US and UK, but literature and examples are also drawn from other types of political system and country.

Weekly topics combine standard political communication topics and contemporary examples, with discussions of related theory and concepts. The following topics are covered: The crisis of politics and media in established democracies; mass media and the news production process; political parties, citizen relations and political marketing; the production of news and the future for traditional print and broadcast news media; media effects and influences, and citizen engagement and participation; historical and cultural elements of political communication, and digital politics and communication. In addition, key case study areas will be explored, including: the 2015 UK Election and EU Referendum; the economics of austerity and financialisation; media management and mediatisation of politics; and health and welfare policy.

Theories and concepts drawn upon include: Theories of democracy (from weak, representative to direct, deliberative); public sphere theory (national, parliamentary, local, global, online, and counter); Political economy and related critiques of capitalist democracy; Work, organisation, professionalization and bureaucracy; mediatisation, popular culture and politics; Primary definition, media consecration, and celebrity; New technologies, technological determinism and social shaping.

Much of the material for this module is highly contemporary, so students are encouraged to maintain an awareness of current developments in political communication in the UK and elsewhere, through newspapers, television, radio and the internet. Students are very much encouraged to bring contemporary examples into the seminar discussions and their essays.

This module will support you to take up a media workplace learning experience which will benefit your academic studies, wider skillsets, and future employability. You’ll complete a 2-week placement between your 2^nd and 3^rd year, then critically evaluate your findings in two assessments.

You’ll be guided in approaching the work placement task with employability workshops on CV writing, personal branding, portfolios, LinkedIn and producing speculative applications. You’ll be supported in finding the 2-week placement by the Internships and Work Placements manager. Lectures and information sessions will be provided online.

The assessment has two elements:

• a written essay where you’ll critically reflect on how your placement enhanced your understanding of current media practice, the media industries, or other theoretical fields you’ve previously studied
• a presentation where you’ll consider how the placement and the learning around it has influenced your own future career development

Please note that placements are not guaranteed, and if you are unsuccessful in completing a placement you will be given the opportunity to change to an alternative module (unless this is a compulsory module for your programme).

In this module students will be introduced to a series of sociological questions about the city and urban life from a perspective which focuses on public culture, consumer culture and everyday life. There is an emphasis on lived space, patterns of housing, spaces of leisure and enjoyment, spaces for multi-culturalism and for sharing public provided resources such as parks, libraries, schools and open spaces, as well as detailed considerations of changes within the retail landscape.
The aim will be to become familiar with the concepts and ideas developed by cultural geographers, social and cultural theorists, by feminists, by post-colonialist scholars, by artists, writers and film-makers about the growth of urbanism, about the sensations and subjective states of intensity which city life generates. The module will also adopt a historical approach charting the rise of urban modernity, the development of shopping and the department store, and it will consider the city as the space for crime, for prostitution and for gang culture. We will also examine processes of migration to the city, and to the way in which power relations in the city result in boundaries, barrios, ghettos, enclaves and fortresses. We will ask questions about the urban workforce, the new service sector, and jobs such as nannies and ‘baristas’. Cities have long been laboratories for sociologists and ethnographers and we will critically examine some of the results of these activities, with a view to producing short ‘urban diaries’ based on close observation of local neighbourhoods or districts in London, e.g. Changes to the East End through gentrification and development. With this in mind we will do an afternoon field trip later in the term to look at the old and the ‘new’ Kings Cross.

The wider conceptual frames for this module are drawn from postmodern theories of space (Jameson, Soja, Massey), from the writing on space by Foucault, from anthropological ideas of everyday life (de Certeau) from sociological studies of urban neighbourhoods (Wacquant), and from sociologists who examine urban micro-economies of culture and creativity (McRobbie). There will be the chance to debate the work of Richard Florida and to reflect on the ideas which inform ‘creative city’ policies. In the first 5 weeks we adopt an approach informed by cultural history and social theory. In the second half we pay close attention to the rise of the ‘creative city’, to processes of gentrification and to neighbourhood politics. Throughout the module students will be encouraged to draw on their own experience of urban culture, as well as draw on the module material to develop a greater understanding of the cities and urban environments in which they grew up.

This module will examine the place of the ‘body’ in contemporary social and cultural theory taking a number of case studies as examples. In recent years across a range of academic disciplines, from sociology, anthropology, cultural studies and psychology, there has been a move away from approaching the body as a pre-given biological entity or substance, to explore the body as a process. This shifts inquiry from asking not ‘what a body is?’, but rather ‘what can a body do’? ‘What could bodies become’? This work privileges the materiality of the body, as well as introducing creative energy and motion into our understandings of corporeality. It also directs and extends our focus away from anthropocentric understandings of the body (ie. that the human body is distinctly ‘human’) and orients our examinations of corporeality to include species bodies, psychic bodies, machinic bodies, vitalist bodies and other-worldly bodies. These bodies may not conform to our expectations of clearly defined boundaries between the psychological, social, biological, ideological, economic and technical, and may not even resemble the molar body in any shape or form.

Thus many of the dualisms that have circulated across academic disciplines have been dismantled and troubled. These include contrasts between nature and culture, the individual and society, the mind and body, the interior and exterior, and the human and animal/machine. This work has emerged for example in relation to debates surrounding bio and digital technologies, body image and eating disorders, gender performativity, animal/ human relations, affective communication, the senses and mediated perception, health and illness, psychiatric and therapy cultures, the emotions, affect and feeling, the importance of engaging with science, including the contemporary neurosciences to name some just some examples. The question is how do we, as humanities scholars, engage with the body and debates surrounding the body and what relevance might this have for understanding our relationship to media practices and technologies, and particularly for how we might theorise mediation?

This module will provide a critical forum to reflect on these issues, and will provide students from the humanities with a critical understanding of theories of society, culture and communications, which recognize that the body has a materiality and cannot simply be collapsed into text, discourse and signifying activity. This work also explores the complex and layered relationships between scientific narratives/practices, cultural narratives/ practices and our own autobiographies/ embodied practices. The module will explore to what extent we need to talk about embodiment, rather than the body in any fixed way.

Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary perspectives (including cultural studiesand anthropology) this module will address the role of ‘tele’-technologies (technologies of distance - such as the telegraph, telephone, and television) in constructing the post-modern geography of the contemporary era, The module takes a non ‘media-centric’ perspective, focusing on the different
historical and cultural contexts within which these technologies operate and on the articulation of material and virtual geographies We begin by focusing on the ‘moral panics’ that have always accompanied each new medium - from the radio, to the cinema, etc. The module highlights the role of what we have come to know as ‘television’ - as the most important medium of the last half century, with a particular focus on its contexts and modes of consumption. The question of technological change will be approached from a historical perspective, for instance, in relation
to the late 19th century – as a period featuring a particularly rapid rate of technological change, compared with our own times. We shall review a range of micro-studies of the household (and public) uses of communications and information technologies, and the module will offer a critical approach to the futurological discourses concerning the supposed powers and effects of today’s ‘new’ communications technologies. We conclude by examining the role of various media (big and small) in processes of identity/boundary construction (at different geographical scales) within the broader context of processes of globalisation. We will also address the role of the media in articulating the private and public spheres, in the construction of national,
disaporic and transnational identities, and in relation to the various mobilities (not only of information, but also of people and commodities) that characterise our era of ‘time-space compression’.

This examines how ‘ethnicities’ and ‘nations’ are constructed within the media. Our aim is to analyse how the media construct ‘ethnicity’ and ‘nations’ over time; to reflect on the role of the media in shaping nations and ethnicities; and to explore the ways in which formations of ethnicity and nationhood affect practices. The module introduces key concepts in Black Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Studies, including: colonial discourse, colonial fantasy, othering, hybridity and diaspora. We look at the intersection between race, ethnicity and other social relations, including gender, sexuality and class.

This module aims to explore how the media operate as a focus of ritual action, symbolic hierarchy and symbolic conflict. In particular, it explores to what extent theoretical frameworks already developed in anthropology and social theory can help us analyse contemporary media and mediated public life.

This module explores various approaches, theoretical and empirical, to understand what might broadly be called the ritual dimensions of contemporary media. Among the questions the module addresses are the following:

1. What can anthropological theories of culture, ritual and power contribute to the understanding of contemporary media?
2. What might we mean by the terms ‘ritual’ and ‘ritualisation’ in relation to media?
3. How do we analyse those times when media production and usage depart from the ordinary and every day, and take on larger social resonances, for example the national broadcasting of major public events?
4. How is the growth of celebrity culture connected to questions of social power?
5. How should we interpret the media’s claims to represent ‘reality’, for example in the proliferating genre of ‘reality TV’?
6. Why do non-media people want to appear in or on the media, and with what consequences do they do so?
7. How is media’s power connected with the practices of state and corporate power and with the latter’s use of media (including for surveillance)?
8. Are media’s ritual dimensions played out differently in different media cultures?
9. How do media rituals affect contemporary public cultures, and with what ethical consequences?

Lectures move from introductory material and theoretical concepts (in the early weeks) to specific aspects of contemporary media production (in the last two-thirds of the term). Students will be encouraged in seminar discussion and in their written work to apply the theoretical concepts introduced in the module to the analysis of specific examples.

The module explores the consequences of social and mobile media in a comparative context. What does it mean to live entangled with social and mobile media? What are the consequences of the culture of ‘always on’ connectivity for our identities, relationships and communities? What are the implications for inequality? Are there any opportunities for protest movements or for coping during emergencies? These questions have never been as urgent as they are today. During the pandemic, we have collectively experienced a huge dependency on social and mobile media as our professional and social lives migrated online. The module offers an opportunity to critically unpack some of the assumptions made about media technologies, starting by unravelling the very notion of social media.

 The module pivots on the double logic of social media: while social media enable socialities and intimacies at a distance, they are also key instruments of extraction and surveillance. This tension between agency and corporate or state control through datafication is a theme that runs across all lectures. The module takes a distinctly non-western approach focusing on the experience of social media in the context of everyday life. The key texts informing our seminar discussions are ethnographies from the global south. Through this comparative approach, we aim to question widely held assumptions about social media as well notions of intimacy, care, labour, protest and inequalities.

The purpose of this module is to educate a new generation of managers, planners, analysts, and programmers in the realities and potential for electronic commerce. It aims to familiarise individuals with current and emerging electronic commerce technologies using the Internet. 

The goal of this module is to provide students with a detailed analysis of the concepts and techniques required to complete the third year module on electronic commerce. 

In achieving this, a further goal is to equip students with a detailed understanding of the major issues regarding the deployment of Internet technologies within organisations and between organizations. 

Topics include: 

• Internet technology for business advantage 
• managing electronic commerce funds transfer 
• reinventing the future of business through electronic commerce 
• business opportunities in electronic commerce 
• electronic commerce 
• website design 
• social, political and ethical issues associated with electronic commerce 
• business plans for technology ventures

The module introduces you to data mining techniques and methods utilised in the process of discovering patterns in data generated in various fields such as business, financial, social, medical etc., that are abundantly available nowadays.

You'll learn practical skills through data mining algorithm implementation, and through conducting knowledge discovery in data with specialised software and libraries. You'll explore the applicability of data mining techniques in areas such as text mining and sentiment analysis, financial applications and credit scoring, prediction modelling in health.

In order to be able to make sense of what is happening now in our culture of moving images, we need to understand its past – not in the sense of teleological development but in terms of how untimely sensibilities and ideas embodied in obsolete images and technologies keep on reappearing, inadvertently perhaps, in the present. This module situates itself within the emerging field of inquiry called “media archaeology,” which searches through the archives in order to account for the forces that make up the contemporary world. The module will look at the deep history of audiovisual mediations through specific “turning points” so as to understand the recurrent forces, motives and forms of experience that have animated the movement of images for the past 400 years. Furthermore, it seeks new methodological approaches to understand the history of technical images, which bridge the rift between criticism and creation, that is, between thinking about and (re)inventing images. In this way, the module requires students to critically reflect on their own relationship to moving image media, relationships that may be productive, poetic and arbitrary as much as they are disciplined, rationalised and controlled.

Through a series of workshops, you will be introduced to examples of best practice in podcasting that will enable to you critically respond to difference in genre, style, subject matter and delivery. You will then be asked to use that knowledge to create and deliver a podcast, maximum duration ten minutes, in any appropriate format. You will explore the sector and understand how to craft a podcast destined for a target audience. Other key topics covered will include learning how to engage listeners using pacing and dynamics. You will be taught how to use microphones to record both yourself – as the presenter or interviewer – and at least one appropriate external contributor. You will also learn how to use editing software during the post-production process to create your podcast.