Media and Communication Studies

The BA in Media & Communication Studies at Aberystwyth University explores who controls and owns our media, how media content is produced, and what kind of impact the media has on us as audiences. We will also introduce you to some of the key media and communication theorists and will consider how you can apply their thinking to your own study of media and communications. This degree will allow you to study in great detail the following: media fandom, advertising, news analysis, website design, digital culture, children and the media, surveillance society, language and the media, media history and policy together with creative practice experience in multi-platform production and experimental media. Your three years of study will be dynamic, invigorating and stimulating.

Why study Media and Communication studies at Aberystwyth?

You will be taught and mentored by staff who are experts in the field of Media and Communication, have excellent connections to the industry, contribute to national debates on the media, and are at the forefront of research in the field. Students on this course will have a deeper understanding of sociology, psychology, cultural studies, history, philosophy, linguistics, and marketing. Students will be taught in vibrant, modern and dynamic teaching facilities including a brand new PC lab designed to assimilate the digital media industry, digital production and editing suites. Our industry links are embedded at the heart of the department with the BBC Wales, regional office and broadcast situated by the entrance. Students can exploit full access to the National Sound and Screen Archive of Wales which is a stone’s through away from the Penglais campus.

What will I learn?

In your first year, you may explore: Relationship between media forms, media institutions and society; The links between established media theory and contemporary approaches to new media; The links between classic and contemporary debates in communication; The research relating to modes of communication between radio, press, advertising, mobile phone technologies and the internet; Key concepts and techniques of media production, directing, cinematography, editing.

In your second year, you may discover: Specific histories, traditions and roles to each medium; Television production; Broadcasting history; Experimental media production; Journalism; Advertising; Videogames; Scriptwriting

In your final year you can choose to: Undertake independent research resulting in a dissertation; Produce experimental or documentary films; Study videogames, TV, gender, media law, semiotics or experimental cinema.

In your first year you will explore the relationship between media forms, media institutions and society; the links between established media theory and contemporary approaches to new media; the links between classic and contemporary debates in communication. You will research relating to modes of communication between radio, press, advertising, mobile phone technologies and the internet. In your second you will discover specific histories, traditions and roles to each medium; particulary in television production, Broadcasting history, Experimental media production, Website design, Surveillance technologies, Journalism, Advertising and Scriptwriting. In your final year you will have the opportunity to produce, direct, edit a short video which can be experimental, documentary or narrative fiction. The best work will be entered for the Royal Television Society Student Video Awards.