Digital Media Culture MA

This MA Digital Media Culture provides you with the crucial knowledge you need to analyse and comprehend today’s fast-evolving digital environments. It offers you critical thinking about digital culture enhanced by direct exposure to digital media software, technologies and design practices.

Why choose this course?

* It is one of the only MA degrees in the UK to combine academic rigour and scholarly consideration with the opportunity for hands-on training in digital media design and management.

* It is designed to prepare you for a career in digital media by offering you the opportunity to learn how new technologies are changing social, cultural and economic life.

What will I learn?

On this MA Digital Media Culture you will acquire the research skills, approaches and methods that will allow you to understand current forms of digital culture, while also anticipating future developments in digital media. Together, we will explore the influence of digital media technologies on contemporary culture and consider how the growing spread of digital images and information have changed how we create and communicate. You will engage with the critical technology issues facing contemporary society and culture including:

* the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI)

* social media and the attention economy

* digital animation and gaming cultures

* the politics of big data and digital algorithms.

How will I learn?

This course is available to study full- or part-time with classes taking place in the evening. These consist of formal lectures, seminars and practical workshops to provide you with hands-on experience. We offer you targeted smaller class sizes and highly interactive teaching which make for an engaging learning experience.

This course focuses on digital media culture, but we also offer an interlinked MA Digital Management. This means that you can tailor your degree to your career goals broadening your skills further with option modules relating to either management or design.

Highlights

* We focus on teaching and research in film and media, journalism, arts policy and management, with the Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture, the Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology and the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI) as focal points of our research culture. BIMI has a rich programme of free screenings and film-related events, and also hosts the annual Essay Film Festival.

* Birkbeck was ranked as one of the top four universities in the UK for its Art and Design research in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework.

* We offer a number of bursaries for postgraduate students.

Careers and employability

On successfully graduating from this MA Digital Media Culture, you will have developed an array of important transferable skills, including:

* strong research skills

* an advanced critical ability in the use of theoretical perspectives

* facility and precision in the use of analytical tools

* digital design capabilities

* effective digital project development and management skills.

Graduates can pursue career paths in digital design, education and training. Possible professions include:

* digital project manager

* digital designer

* multimedia specialist

* digital consultant

* digital educator

* technology policy analyst.

MA Digital Media Culture graduates will be well positioned to pursue further academic study at PhD level, or work within digital media and design industries.

Some of our graduates from this course have gone on to be employed at the following organisations:

* The Ada Lovelace Institute for Research on AI and Society

* Clusta Social Media Platform

* Nissan

* King’s College London

* The NHS

* US/UK Fulbright Commission

* LeanLab Education Technology