This class aims to provide you with the inspiration, mindset and skills you need to create new business ventures, or to prepare for self-managed portfolio careers within the context of the creative industries.

Its purpose is to afford the opportunity for students to develop their entrepreneurial ideas in a risk-free environment.

The class content includes:

• developing an idea
• finding your niche
• technological innovation in journalism
• freelance careers 
• new models of journalism

As well as learning new skills, they'll also be able to engage with guest speakers who have forged successful entrepreneurial careers in the media world.

By the end of the course, students will understand some of the key drivers that impact upon the successful creation and management of a new venture where journalism is a core skill, understand the skills and resources needed to create an entrepreneurial organisation, develop an awareness of the requirements of freelance journalism and gain knowledge of innovation in journalism.

This optional module examines the complex relationship between gender and violence from a feminist and intersectional perspective. You will explore how violence is gendered, how gender can be enacted through violence, and how these dynamics are shaped by structural inequalities such as race, class, and gender identity.

Building on a shared conceptual framework, the module focuses in depth on sexual violence, using case studies drawn from Gender Studies, Media, Social Policy, Criminology, and Politics. Topics vary each year and may include sexual violence at music festivals, image-based abuse, so-called ‘honour’ violence, carceral politics, war and militarism, and feminist digital activism against sexual violence.

The aim of this class is to provide fundamental data analytics skills to postgraduate students in the media and communication subject area. The class focuses on embracing new analytical capabilities provided by developments in the field of information communication and technology. The Media Analytics module will provide a much-needed set of analytical skills, enabling students to adapt to recent trends in the media and communication landscape.

This conceptual class explores many of the contradictions and consequences of how health is presented in the media.

The media’s role is to provide both information and entertainment, so we also examine entertainment media and its influence on health education, social norms, and stigmatisation.

After this class, students will understand better how illness and health are presented by the media, what contributes to such representations, and how that affects public attitudes and behaviours.

They will also begin to notice some of the health myths sold through the media and become a more discerning media consumers overall.

They will discover the disciplines of public health, health communication and risk communication and their many complexities.

Last, but not least, students will become better journalists or writers, not just about health, but about people.

This module introduces key feminist theories of knowledge and research methodologies. You examine how feminist knowledge is produced within and beyond the academy, and explore the principles, practices, and ethics shaping feminist research. The module includes a visit to Glasgow Women’s Library, offering hands-on engagement with feminist archives and community-based knowledge-making. It also prepares you for the Gender Studies Research Placement.

This is a supervised-reading module designed to allow students to delve more deeply into a core area of  Political Communication and Media that interests them – with expert guidance - in preparation for the dissertation.

20 credits

This module focuses on the impact of academic research outside the walls of the University. You'll encounter cutting-edge research in a range of scholarly fields, and deepen your understanding of how knowledge is produced in the academy.

The module also introduces you to a range of practical skills, supporting you to develop expertise in engaging with a variety of publics.

You'll have the opportunity to use both audio and video technologies through, for instance, podcasting, video production, and writing for public exhibitions.

You'll study the dominant media and communication theories, and their application across a number of international contexts and media platforms. You'll examine the trends and texts over a number of media contexts and genres, including popular cultural platforms and the coverage of politics, as well as dealing with the implications of international media on the mediation and public understanding of conflict and terrorism. 

This module introduces the core principles of news gathering, reporting, feature writing and communications, with a focus on their application in contemporary digital journalism.

You'll develop the practical techniques required to produce compelling digital content across multiple media platforms, and gain the skills needed to meet the professional expectations of converged, cross platform news environments.

This module offers you an interdisciplinary and historicised understanding of gender theory and its implications for everyday struggles around gendered liberation. You will develop an understanding of the ways in which gender informs, and is informed by, other structural inequalities, drawing on key thinkers on gender from varied feminist traditions, including black feminisms, queer feminisms, trans feminisms and feminist disability studies.

This optional module allows you to work closely with a member of staff on a mutually agreed topic in the interdisciplinary field of Gender Studies. It is designed for students who wish to pursue academic interests that are not covered by existing option modules. Through a guided independent reading project, you will develop skills in desk-based research, critical literature review, and independent academic working, while gaining an advanced understanding of feminist theory and research in relation to your chosen topic. This module runs every year.

Concerns about the impact of humankind on the environment and the threat to planetary health caused by unsustainable patterns of production, consumption and management mean that there is a pressing need for this module which explores media, science and the environmental crisis.

This class provides students with a critical overview of key debates regarding science and environmental communications and focuses on how messages are produced, packaged, and circulated for diverse audiences with examples drawn from legacy media and contemporary social media platforms.

Students will thus gain an understanding of overarching theoretical approaches to science and the environment from the cross-cutting fields of Sociology of media; cultural studies; feminist research; critical race research and science and technology studies.

We will examine reporting of the climate emergency; analyse framing of microplastics in the media, explore the role of celebrities in shaping environmental campaigns and deconstruct assumptions about what constitutes ‘pollution’.

The module is assessed by an academic essay and a short blog post.

20 credits

This module explores contemporary feminist thinking in relation to earlier feminist debates, campaigns, writings, and forms of activism.

You critically examine how feminist ideas, theories, and practices have developed over time, and how continuity and change are theorised within feminism(s). Drawing on interdisciplinary expertise across the department and faculty, the module encourages engagement with a wide range of sources - including archival materials at Glasgow Women’s Library - to analyse the historical, political, and theoretical significance of key feminist ideas, movements, and actors.

You'll examine the development and influence of specific media forms, both in the associated conventions and forms and in the relationship between media and the social and political realms. You'll also gain an understanding of the rise of participatory and social media, and of the relationship between interpersonal media, mass media and social media.

This module is designed to provide you with an understanding of how media and cultural contexts shape understandings and practices of crime, violence, victimisation and justice. You will leave with a critical understanding of media representations of crime and violence and skills to identify the ways in which media is used as a vehicle for crime, violence and/or justice.

This module with afford you an advanced insight into the principles, tactics and ethical responsibilities of strategic communication. Using appropriate case studies, the module will critically evaluate the necessary communication concepts, the position of stakeholders and strategic narratives, as well as the ethics of strategic communication in working with notions of corporate responsibility and social development.