University of Kent Courses Undergraduate 2020 Media Studies
Media Studies - BA (Hons)
UCAS code W990
Our new Media Studies BA is designed for students with a passion for contemporary culture and a desire to influence future developments in the arts. This interdisciplinary degree allows you to study contemporary culture while undertaking creative practice, such as filmmaking, photography, screenwriting, playwriting, film criticism, theatre journalism and visual arts writing.
Communication happens through still and moving images, spoken and written words, music, drawing and animation. In the 21st century the boundaries between these forms have blurred. On this programme, you examine how old and new media are creating meaning today and using our first-class resources create work of your own.
How is art different to entertainment? How do filmmakers, performers and artists express themselves using style and genre? What are the distinctions between 'high' and 'low' media? The teaching staff, leading researchers in the field, guide you to answering these questions and more. They help you understand how media shape us, and how you, through your creative practice, can shape media.
We have embedded practice-based learning within the programme with modules in areas such as filmmaking, photography, arts criticism, screenwriting and curating. The programme has been designed to deepen your understanding of contemporary media through creative ability.
All Media Studies students have the opportunity to spend a year abroad as part of their degree. This gives you an opportunity to increase your contacts and network so you can hit the ground running when you graduate. For more information view the Media Studies with an Approved Year Abroad programme.
Communications and Media Studies at Kent scored 92.2 out of 100 in The Complete University Guide 2019 and Media and Film Studies was ranked 10th in The Guardian University Guide 2019.
In The Guardian University Guide 2019, over 97% of final-year Media and Film Studies students were satisfied with the quality of teaching on their course.
The following modules are indicative of those offered on this programme. This listing is based on the current curriculum and may change year to year in response to new curriculum developments and innovation. Most programmes will require you to study a combination of compulsory and optional modules. You may also have the option to take 'elective' modules from other programmes offered by the University in order that you may customise your programme and explore other subject areas of interest to you or that may further enhance your employability.
MSTU3010 - Media and Meaning
This module introduces students to the ways in which meaning is created and communicated across various media. The primary focus will be upon a range of key forms across the historical continuum of media practice. These trends will span both traditional and new forms of media content, such as print, radio, television, the Internet and user generated content. Media are therefore studied in this module as processes of transmission that shape and constrain what can be communicated through previous generations and into the future.
MSTU4001 - Media Audiences
This module examines perceptions of media audiences and their social and economic power through the study of key theorists, themes and case studies. Students will consider the audience as an object, the audience as an institution, the audience as a user and more laterally, as a producer of media in the digital age. This module also considers fandom, public opinion and ratings, and how these once fixed concepts have been blurred in the age of Web 2.0, troubling traditional notions of audiences as passive receivers or at times even victims. Through real-world contemporary examples and students' own experiences with media, this module seeks to make audience theory relevant and accessible to the study of personal and public media consumption.
One of the assessment methods employed on this module is a Digital Portfolio. The Digital Portfolio platform allows theoretical modules to create practical implementations of scholarly ideas and interactive forms of assessment, which may include blogging, video essays, and other forms of trans-media content.
MSTU4002 - Media and Identity
This introductory module examines the concept of 'identity' through the prism of cultural capital. Students will be introduced to key concepts and theories surrounding issues of gender, class, race, ethnicity and sexuality. These topics are considered through a series of case studies that may include theories of aesthetics, taste formations, sub-cultural theories, film and representations of class, teenage fan cultures, online streaming platforms and consumer choice, identity politics and cultural production. Students will be asked to consider the role that media processes play in constructing identity, community, inclusion and exclusion.
MSTU3000 - Making Media
This module draws upon concepts in Media Studies to inform an introduction to moving image production. The module explores various forms of screen culture - from cinema, to television, to content creation in the digital age. Basic technical skills in production and post-production are taught along with craft skills applicable to narrative and factual screen production. Through a combination of lectures, screenings, creative and technical workshops this module encourages critical reflection, independent thought, and dialogue between media theory and practice. Practical work is designed to trigger both conceptual and creative thinking as well as consideration of audience responses to moving images and visual narratives. The essay, a critical analysis of the finished film, is designed to encourage a dialogue between theory and practice.
MSTU5000 - Media Ethics
This module seeks to investigate some of the most pressing ethical issues in contemporary media culture and the mediated arts. Topics may include: violence in video games, nudity on the screen and in advertising, anti-heroes and villains in fiction, propaganda and manipulation, sexism and racism in humor, shock value in the news and in contemporary art. To answer the many moral questions that arise in this context students will examine basic notions such as truth, objectification, voyeurism, exploitation, offence, harm, gender, and stereotype.
MSTU5001 - Social Media and Participatory Culture
The digital sphere has given voice and meeting spaces to communities and activist groups, enabling social action, art and change. It has also been used by reactionaries, nationalists and the far-right groups to amplify hate filled messages. Analysing platforms that may include Facebook, Twitter, Uber and Wikipedia, the module engages with concepts such as participatory and collaborative culture, sharing economies, democracy and surveillance.
Students will engage in sourcing, analysing and critiquing social media content by way of a Digital Portfolio. This work will be contextualised by an essay that situates students' multimedia exercises within key debates in online culture. To facilitate this, lectures and seminars will explore various case studies - from mainstream politicians' use of social media in campaigning, to the intensification of hate speech in the cyber sphere, to the ethics of using unpaid journalists and the economy of sharing - in order to encourage students to engage critically with the relationship between politics, economics, personal expression and art making practices in the digital age.
MSTU5005 - Podcasting
Podcasting is a digital media form that is increasing its audience reach and size year on year. Unlike supposedly impartial journalists, podcast presenters are often encouraged to give personal perspective allowing these media makers to have creative and intellectual agency often omitted from traditional mediated forms. This module employs both theory and practice-based learning to examine the podcasting genre and consider how podcasts are developed; what are the editorial and ethical issues at stake; and how audiences are acquired and expanded. Students are given the opportunity to research contemporary practitioners, companies, and the platforms for the dissemination of podcasts.
In parallel to learning to this theoretical and industry based context, students will engage with this more personal form of production, as they design, produce and distribute a podcast series that will be available for download.
MSTU5006 - Video Gaming: Play and Players
This module aims to provide students with a broad-based knowledge of the history and development of video gaming, alongside an understanding of the technological and industrial advances in game design. Students will learn about game theory and be able to use it analyse a wide range of game types. They will learn about intersecting questions of narrative, interactivity, space, play, players, game genres and representation. They will gain an understanding of how formal and informal regulation works to control game content, and be able to conceive of all of this through a range of critical theories.
One of the assessment methods employed on this module is a Digital Portfolio. The Digital Portfolio platform allows students on theoretical modules to create practical implementations of scholarly ideas and
ART502 - Costume and Fashion
The art historian Aby Warburg – an avid reader of Thomas Carlyle's philosophical novel about clothes Sartor Resartus (1836) – said that a good costume, like a good symbol, should conceal as much as it reveals. This module will take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of costume and fashion – the art that can be worn – in order to explore their roles in drama, film and the visual arts. The social values encoded by clothes, their relation to class or sexual identity, will be discussed, along with how these assumptions inform the use of costume in adaptations or stagings of texts, or how they colour our view of a character, or of a director's interpretation (for example, using deliberate anachronism). The role of clothing and costume in the history of art will be analysed from artists' representation of clothes, contemporary or otherwise, to their involvement in fashion design.
ART522 - Disability and the Arts
This module will look at disability in the arts, covering theatre, film and visual art. The students will engage with the historical representation of disability within the arts and the way in which disability scholars have critically engaged with it. The students will also look at arts institutions (i.e. theatres, cinemas and galleries) and the disabling barriers within those institutions that prevent the full participation of people with impairments in the arts. This will culminate in an 'accessibility review', whereby the students analyse the adjustments made by arts institutions for people with impairments and the extent to which they are effective. Finally, the students will engage with examples of contemporary disabled artists whose impairments informs the aesthetic qualities of their work.
ART523 - Photography: Contexts of Practice
This is a practice-based module exploring the photographic medium and the contexts of its use through the production of photographs in response to a project brief and group-based critical discussion of the work produced. Students investigate how the context in which photographs are made affect how the world is represented, and how in turn these images shape perception. Students choose three practical project briefs that are designed to enable them to explore the medium creatively and through informed and reflective practice. The emphasis of the module is upon this creative practice rather than the acquisition of specific technical skills, and as such students are at liberty to use any photographic production and post-production technologies they wish to experiment with or find appropriate. A camera phone and access to a computer and printer are all that is needed for this module, though students who wish to make use of digital image processing or analogue processes, including use of a darkroom, are encouraged to do so. Each of the practical project briefs will be supported through a series of lectures closely examining various genres, styles and other contexts of photographic production through the work of those who have shaped them. In addition students will present the work they have produced in response to their project briefs, and engage in a broad critical discussion or their own and other's work.
Year abroad
Going abroad as part of your degree is an amazing experience and a chance to develop personally, academically and professionally. You experience a different culture, gain a new academic perspective, establish international contacts and enhance your employability.
All students within the Faculty of Humanities can apply to spend a Term or Year Abroad as part of their degree at one of our partner universities in North America, Asia or Europe. You are expected to adhere to any progression requirements in Stage 1 and Stage 2 to proceed to the Term or Year Abroad.
The Term or Year abroad is assessed on a pass/fail basis and will not count towards your final degree classification. Places and destination are subject to availability, language and degree programme. To find out more, please see Go Abroad.
MSTU6001 - Media, Industry and Innovation
This module gives students the opportunity to bring prior learning surrounding the media industry into a focused context, whilst enabling critical thinking around contemporary and future innovations in the field. Students will engage in either a work-based situation, or through a social impact project;with a theoretical innovation; or a personal practice project. This engagement may be in any area of media such as:
-	Digital technology
-	Marketing
-	Policy
-	Online content creation
-	Issues of representation
-	Film and television production
-	Activism
-	Citizen journalism
Should students choose the industry engagement option, the student will be responsible for either finding the work-based situation or developing their project, advice and support from the School and CES will be available. This engagement with industry and innovation will build upon the student's personal interests in the media industry and will be relevant to the career they expect to pursue upon graduation. The total of 300 hours will be divided as required for purposes of preparation, engagement in industry or with their personal project and reflection/completion of required assessment. Students will come together with a dedicated member of staff in seminars on a weekly basis to discuss challenges, experiences, and progress.
Podcasting is a media form that is increasing its audience reach and size year on year. Unlike supposedly impartial journalists, podcast presenters are often encouraged to give personal perspective allowing these media makers to have creative and intellectual agency often omitted from traditional mediated forms. This module employs both theory and practice-based learning to examine the podcasting genre and consider how podcasts are developed; what are the editorial and ethical issues at stake; and how audiences are acquired and expanded. Students are given the opportunity to research contemporary practitioners, companies and the platforms for the dissemination of podcasts.
In parallel to learning about the podcasting culture and its contexts, students will engage with this more personal form of production, as they design, produce and distribute a podcast that will be available for download.
MSTU6003 - Sex, Gender and Digital Culture
This module gives students the opportunity to bring prior learning on gender and sexuality into a focused context, whilst employing a critical study of representation in contemporary mediaand digital cultures. `Students will be encouraged to question how (and if) representations of gender and sexuality are shifting in the millenial era though a series of critical questions, such as: How has the Internet changed human relationships? What is the impact of pornography on contemporary youth culture? Are men also objectified by the media? How should we understand misogyny and has it been intensified in the digital age? How do we define consent post MeToo? Have advertisers apropriated feminism? What is the difference between liberation and exploitation? How are LGBT groups represented (or not represented)? What is the relationship between race and sexualisation? What should diversity in the media look like?
One of the assessment methods employed on this module is a Digital Portfolio. The Digital Portfolio platform allows students on theoretical modules to create practical implementations of scholarly ideas and interactive forms of assessment, which may include blogging, video essays, and other forms of trans-media content.
ART526 - Arts Funding and Policy: Making it Happen
This module will look at arts funding policy and public funding structures for the arts, including the formation of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), and the Arts Council and its various models of operation since 1947 through to the present. This will serve to place productions from across the arts within the context of who makes policy and how it is formed, while acting as an introduction to arts funding and the application and measurement process. Students will gain an understanding of the structure of central, regional and local government in as much as they affect the arts. Trust and Foundations that support and nurture the arts are also explored in the context of how these can supplement and develop productions. Sponsorship and commercial involvement is looked at in the ways that this can be integrated into the package.
ART520 - Psychology of the Arts
This interdisciplinary course will examine historical and current theoretical ideas and research on the ways in which art is created and perceived. Artforms that will be considered include visual arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, popular art), performing arts (dance and theater), music, and film. Readings will interface with subdisciplines of psychology such as perception, psychoaesthetics, neurophysiology, social psychology, and studies of emotion. Principal areas of focus will include aesthetics, arts-experimental design, perception of art, meaning in art, the psychology of the creative process, social and cultural issues, and the ramifications of arts-sciences research. The primary focus will be on Western art forms, though other world art traditions and aesthetics will be discussed. Assessment methods will test understanding through a summary and critical reflection on a selected text and the proposal, research, and design and oral presentation of a potential interdisciplinary research project.
ART500 - Independent Project
The module gives School of Arts students across a range undergraduate programmes the opportunity to undertake a written independent research project at stage 3.
Students who wish to take the module must approach a permanent academic member of staff with a proposal, typically in advance of module registration, during the Spring term of the previous year. Students pick a research topic of their choice; however, students are only allowed to register for the module with the permission of a staff member who has agreed to supervise the project, and who has the expertise to do so. Potential supervisors must also ensure before they agree to supervise a project that the resources required to complete the project will be available to the student, and that adequate supervisory support will be available to the student throughout their study on the module.
Students will be supported in the preparation and submission of their work by their supervisor, although a central expectation of the module is that students will take increasing responsibility for their learning, consistent with expectations of Level 6 study.
ART501 - Arts Internship
Students will engage in a work-based situation of their choice. The student will be responsible for finding the work-based situation, though support from the School and CES will be available. The internship should bear relevance to their subject of study or a career they expect to pursue upon graduation. The total of 300 hours will be divided as required for purposes of preparation, attendance of work placement and reflection/completion of required assessment.
All modules involve live lectures, small group seminars, screenings and occasionally group trips to galleries, museums, libraries and festivals. Methods of assessment vary between modules. The majority of modules are assessed solely by coursework, while others have a mix of coursework and exams.
Typically, students attend two lectures a week of one-and-a-half to two hours in duration, as well as two seminars a week of similar length. In addition, many modules will have screenings, readings, trips and related learning activities.
develop existing and new areas of teaching in response to current research and scholarship within contemporary media arts
provide students with a rich understanding of contemporary thought about the media of the visual and performed arts, visual culture and aesthetics
encourage and consolidate a distinctive approach to media arts, focusing upon our strengths in film, aesthetics, contemporary art, and practice-based learning
enhance students' awareness of sensitivity to the context in which the arts are produced, disseminated and received in the contemporary world
You will develop knowledge and understanding of:
particular media forms and genres, and the way in which they organise understandings, meanings and affects
the interconnectedness of texts and contexts, and of the shifting configurations of communicative, cultural and aesthetic practices and systems
the historical evolution of particular genres, aesthetic traditions and forms, and of their current characteristics and possible future developments
the material conditions of media and cultural consumption, and of the cultural contexts in which people appropriate, use and make sense of media and cultural products
the aesthetic and formal qualities at play, and their relation to meanings, in particular cultural forms
the student's own creative processes and practice through engagement in one or more production practices
narrative processes, generic forms and modes of representation at work in media and cultural texts
an understanding of the ways in which specific media and their attendant technologies make possible different kinds of aesthetic effects and forms
the ways in which people engage with cultural texts and practices and make meaning from them.
You gain the following intellectual abilities:
engage critically with major thinkers, debates and intellectual paradigms within the field and put them to productive use
understand forms of communication, media and culture as they have emerged historically and appreciate the processes through which they have come into being, with reference to social, cultural and technological change
examine forms of communication, media and culture critically with appropriate reference to the social and cultural contexts and diversity of contemporary society
analyse closely, interpret and show the exercise of critical judgment in the understanding and, as appropriate, evaluation of these forms of communication, media and culture
develop substantive and detailed knowledge and understanding in one or more designated areas of media arts
consider and evaluate their own work in a reflective manner, with reference to academic and/or professional issues, debates and conventions.
You gain specific skills in the following:
critically appraising some of the widespread common sense understandings and misunderstandings of communications, media and culture, and the debates and disagreements to which these give rise
critically evaluating the contested nature of some objects of study within the fields of communication, media, film and cultural studies, and the social and political implications of the judgements which are made
showing insight into the range of attitudes and values arising from the complexity and diversity of contemporary communications, media, culture and society, and the capability to consider and respond to these
drawing upon and bringing together ideas from different sources of knowledge and from different academic disciplines
carrying out various forms of research for essays, projects, creative productions or dissertations involving sustained independent enquiry
formulating appropriate research questions and employing appropriate methods and resources for exploring those questions
evaluating and drawing upon the range of sources and the conceptual frameworks appropriate to research in the chosen area
exploring matters that may be new and emerging, drawing upon a variety of personal skills and upon a variety of academic and non-academic sources.
You gain transferable skills in the following:
working in flexible, creative and independent ways, showing self-discipline, self-direction and reflection
gathering, organising and deploying ideas and information in order to formulate arguments cogently, and express them effectively in written, oral or other forms
retrieving and generating information, and evaluating sources, in carrying out independent research
organising and managing supervised, self-directed projects
communicating effectively in interpersonal settings, in writing and other media where appropriate
working productively in a group or team, showing abilities at different times to listen, contribute and lead effectively
delivering work to a given length, format, brief and deadline, properly referencing sources and ideas and making use, as appropriate, of a problem-solving approach
putting to use a range of information communication technology (ICT) skills from basic competences such as data analysis and word-processing to more complex skills using web-based technology or multimedia, and developing, as appropriate, specific proficiencies in utilising a range of media technologies.
Media Studies graduates have the same wide-ranging career opportunities as other graduates in the faculty of humanities. These include teaching, local and central government, business and the NGO sector. Our graduates also have skills and experience relevant to careers in the creative industries and media journalism, galleries and museums, heritage and tourism, and marketing and advertising.
The University will consider applicants holding BTEC National Diploma and Extended National Diploma Qualifications (QCF; NQF; OCR) on a case-by-case basis. Please contact us for further advice on your individual circumstances. A typical offer would be to achieve DDM.
34 points overall including 15 points at HL
Part-time TBC £9900
6 years part-time
Media Studies	subject leaflet (PDF)
Enoch Odubade
Student Profile Enoch Odubade
"I can't imagine myself at any other uni. "
I can't imagine myself at any other uni.
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