Digital Media Culture (Taught)

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 you will 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 you will learn

This course is available to study full- or part-time. It has an evening timetable 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 two interlinked MA Digital Media courses, one which focuses on management and one which focuses on design aspects.

Highlights

• The unique combination of technical, management and conceptual skills will increase your chances of working in one of the most rapidly expanding sectors in the UK. The majority of jobs in the sector are located in London and the southeast, with Birkbeck uniquely positioned to take advantage of technology hubs such as East London's 'Silicon Roundabout'.

• 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.

• We have state-of-the art cinema and exhibition spaces, all housed in a historic building that was a former home to key members of the Bloomsbury Group, including the author Virginia Woolf and the artist Vanessa Bell.

• 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.