Your first year of Media and Cultural Studies
During your first year, you have the flexibility to both explore something new and deepen your existing knowledge.
6th for Communication & Media Studies
The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide (2024)
Joint 3rd for Graduate Prospects (Communication and Media Studies), Complete University Guide (2024)
Access to Digital Media Studio and specialist equipment
Why Lancaster?
Media shapes who we are, what we think and what we value. At Lancaster, we’ve created a course where expertise meets practical skills. New technology and new platforms mean you’ll be preparing for careers in the creative sector and digital journalism that didn’t even exist until recently.
Bring ideas to life
We know it’s important for you to understand the way media is changing, but you also need to be able to apply this knowledge to succeed in this competitive industry. Whatever fascinates you will influence what you create on this course, whether that’s short films, digital content and podcasts, or any media relevant to today’s world.
We’ll look at how media is produced and consumed to help you become a better creator, as well as studying the social, economic and political dimensions of this industry on a global scale. You’ll look at practices and platforms in the ever-changing media landscape to make you aware of the challenges facing professionals.
Your platform, your voice
Our research influences real world conversations. While based in Lancaster, you’ll be learning from experts who testify for parliamentary enquiries, run their own podcast series, or raise awareness of issues like gender inequality through their work.
While based abroad, you will have the opportunity to potentially explore new and different topics, while gaining experience of what it is like to live and study in a different academic environment.
When it comes to doing your dissertation, you’ll follow in the footsteps of our staff. You can complete your dissertation either via writing about research you have carried out or via media practice. Either way, we’ll expect you to thoroughly research your topic and the intended audience. We’ll encourage you to let your imagination run wild! Past students have created music albums, board games and even a multimedia cookbook.
Roles like digital content creator didn’t even exist a couple of decades ago, and platforms like Patreon have changed the way we consume media. What comes next is unknown, but you’ll have the skills you need to adapt to whatever challenges you face.
Your analysis, research, presentation and writing skills will be valuable to employers across a range of areas. If you want to be your own boss, you’ll have the foundation of knowledge you need to create your own media company.
Our graduates find rewarding roles in:
This course also provides a strong basis for diverse types of postgraduate study, including areas like television production or teaching.
Lancaster University is dedicated to ensuring that you gain a highly reputable degree. We are also dedicated to ensuring that you graduate with relevant life and work-based skills. We are unique in that every student is eligible to participate in The Lancaster Award, which offers you the opportunity to complete activities such as work experience, employability/career development, campus community and social development.
Visit our Employability section for full details.
A Level ABB
IELTS 6.5 overall with at least 5.5 in each component. For other English language qualifications we accept, please see our English language requirements webpages.
International Baccalaureate 32 points overall with 16 points from the best 3 Higher Level subjects
BTEC Distinction, Distinction, Merit
We welcome applications from students with a range of alternative UK and international qualifications, including combinations of qualification. Further guidance on admission to the University, including other qualifications that we accept, frequently asked questions and information on applying, can be found on our general admissions webpages.
Contact Admissions Team + 44 (0) 1524 592028 or via ugadmissions@lancaster.ac.uk
Lancaster University offers a range of programmes, some of which follow a structured study programme, and some which offer the chance for you to devise a more flexible programme to complement your main specialism.
Information contained on the website with respect to modules is correct at the time of publication, and the University will make every reasonable effort to offer modules as advertised. In some cases changes may be necessary and may result in some combinations being unavailable, for example as a result of student feedback, timetabling, Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' (PSRB) requirements, staff changes and new research. Not all optional modules are available every year.
From mass media to social media, from debates on authenticity and representation in reality-tv to struggles between users and the creative industries on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
This full-year module enables you to critically examine and analyse a range of media and cultural practices, texts, and technologies in a wide variety of contexts. It introduces you to a number of key concepts and theories that deal with media and culture, and it enables you to become a creative, critical, and confident consumer and producer of media in an ever-changing cultural and technological landscape.
This module is divided into a number of blocks, focusing on a variety of important topics such as: Media and Representation, Media and Practice, Media and Participation, Media and Technology, and Media and Reality. These topics will be discussed and explored with help of a range of contemporary examples, cases, and debates in television, digital games, film, advertisement, popular music, and social media.
One advantage of this full-year course is that it is carefully designed to help you develop skills at presenting your analysis and ideas in different ways, including in group discussions, essays and exam answers. By the end of the module you will be able to interpret and analyse different contemporary media and cultural phenomena with confidence, and be able to support your views and opinions with plenty of academic sources.
This module challenges you to think about why some private troubles become public concerns or social problems while others do not. It considers how certain issues are constructed as ‘problems’ and the factors that contribute to this. It helps you to understand more about both why we study social problems and the various ways in which we can do so.
Throughout the module we explore broad historical and contemporary responses to social problems. In particular, we will seek to understand how contemporary social problems reflect and reproduce economic and social inequalities and how those inequalities are constructed through different welfare ideologies and approaches.
This full-year module is organised into different ‘blocks’ underpinned by key themes, such as: need, community, citizenship, rights, and equality and social justice. We look, for example, at research and conceptual ideas that can help us understand poverty in contemporary society: we explore different ways of defining and measuring poverty, explanations of why people are poor, how the state attempts to tackle poverty and how it impacts upon the lives of individuals.
This module considers the forms of organisation in which gender is produced and reproduced, the structures of power that have developed as a result, and ways in which communities and movements have resisted marginalisation. We will look at the connections between the ways gender manifests in society and culture and the ways in which gender is studies (and not studied) in academic fields. We will also make connections between academic work, feminist movements and diversity activism more generally.
What does it mean to ‘think sociologically’? When there are so many academic disciplines and non-academic areas of professional expertise, what is unique and important about starting with the social? This module begins with fundamental questions about the value of sociology in understanding the contemporary world and goes on to explore how the significance of our questions and everyday experiences are transformed when investigating all kinds of contemporary social problems, from inequality to globalisation, sociologically.
This full-year module is organised into different ‘blocks’ that connect themes in sociology – such as the relationship between self and society or between self and power – to both long-standing and newly emerging research. Whether or not you have studied sociology before, this module will introduce you to new areas of sociology, as well as demonstrating how key themes such as consumption, identity, social justice, or culture and media intersect with different sociological questions and sites of enquiry. Lecturers draw upon the ongoing research undertaken at Lancaster, giving you access to current insights that are inspiring change in policy and professional organisations.
The benefit of having multiple topics and themes addressed within one year-long module is that the assessments are carefully designed to slowly build up your research and study skills over your first year of study, whilst still giving you the flexibility to write major essays on the topics that are most interesting to you. The module provides you with a fantastic opportunity to explore new ideas and find new inspiration for understanding how we lead our lives today, and what possibilities there are for change tomorrow.
This course focusses on the relationship between media, representation and power. We engage closely with the most influential cultural theories of modern times, putting them to work to understand how power operates through forms of mediation in late capitalist societies. We address these issues through analysis of a contemporary cultural phenomena ranging from the food poverty to the spectacular brand management of the British royal family, from Pride parades to our culture’s obsession with weight. We focus on a range of media including advertising, film, photography, multimedia art, theme parks, news media, social media and the internet.
Example topics covered include:
Everyday life is often described as bombarding us with images, and contemporary culture is therefore frequently understood as a visual culture.
This module will introduce theories and practices that have addressed these questions. Examples of topics studied include:
On this module you will have the opportunity to gain a critical understanding of recent and ongoing themes in Media and Cultural Studies and Sociology on the topic of vision and visuality, media and culture, develop different reading and writing skills and participate in lively discussions and analytical exercises.
Since real life problems are often complex, multiple types of data can be useful in understanding them. You will be given the opportunity to develop practical skills while undertaking pilot research on a real world problem.
This module aims to prepare you for an Independent Dissertation project in your final year. It is designed around active learning - helping you to develop skills to do your own research. Lectures address cross-cutting methodological debates as well as established methods (such as interviewing, discourse analysis, ethnography and quantitative surveys).
Most of your time, however, is spent in seminars where you will try out methods such as interviewing, analysing media texts, and doing observation on campus. There are ample opportunities for feedback as you develop ideas for your project-based final assessment, and build diverse skills to support your final year dissertation.
This module will introduce students to sociological thinking on climate change. Debates about climate change are shifting, and beginning to make much stronger links between a vast and complex planetary perspective (a globe in crisis) and the private sphere (the home, low-carbon lifestyles, urban living, consumer demand, etc.). In this context, social theorists have been considering what sociological thinking can offer to contemporary debates on climate change issues. The module aims to introduce you to a range of new and emerging sociological analyses which examine: climate change and social change; new subjectivities, institutions and collectives under climate change; climate activism; dynamics of crisis and denial; the contested politics of climate change science; the global political economy of climate change; utopias and dystopias of climate change.
This module explores the question of how information and communications technologies, in their multiple forms, figure in our everyday lives. The aim of the module is to develop an appreciation for the range of experiences affected by digital media, including the progressive expansion of life online, and the increasingly intimate relations between life online and off. We’ll explore global divisions of digital labour; hactivism. The module will consider the new possibilities that the changing social infrastructure of digital technologies afford, while also learning to look at the rhetorics and practices of the virtual with a questioning and critical eye. Throughout the course we’ll be attentive to issues of gender, race and other marks of sameness and difference as they operate among humans, and between humans and machines.
Family and intimate relationships form a crucial part of everyday social life. We are born into family and intimate relationships. We establish, maintain and dissolve family and intimate bonds over the life course. We navigate our changing relationship with parents, siblings, and relatives. We establish, maintain and re-establish intimate ties with partners and perhaps children.
But what are ‘families’? What makes intimate relationships ‘intimate’? How do people date, marry, separate, divorce, and re-partner? How do people ‘do’ families and intimacy in the everyday vicissitudes of match-making, romance, conflicts, care, money, domestic labour, and power? Why do people practise families and intimacy as they do? How do broader social, economic, political and cultural institutions configure our ‘private’ lives? How do the ways in which we relate to family members and intimate others shape the societies in which we live?
In an increasingly interconnected world, family and intimate relationships — personal and private as they are — are increasingly shaped by social forces operating on a global scale. The changing forms and practices of families and intimacy also help shape social trends as grandeur as globalisation.
In this module, we explore theoretical and empirical issues pertaining to the resilience and transformation of family and intimate relationships in a global context.
This module focuses on racism and racial formations in the world today in both historical and contemporary perspectives. We will consider how ideas of race are historically constructed and look at how racism takes on different forms. Topics may include: the slave trade, colonialism and imperialism; ‘everyday racism’; structural racism; the social construction of ‘whiteness’; anti-racists politics and movements. The aim of the course is for you to gain an overview of various sociological approaches to explaining ‘race’, but also to gain an understanding of how such theories make a difference in the world today.
Television remains one of the most pervasive and prevalent communication mediums. It shapes how we perceive and make sense of the nation, and offers representational frameworks through which a sense of identity and community can be constructed. Television has its critics - who consider it vulgar, mundane, stupefying, 'chewing gum for the eyes' - yet despite consistent predictions of its decline, television appears to have weathered the storm of fragmentation and digitalisation and remains a crucial media site that shapes national values and debate. This module introduces students to the field of television studies, its empirical and theoretical tools and the critical perspectives that help us explore and evaluate the recent history of television and explore its possible futures.
Media is increasingly experienced transculturally. Those with good internet connections can access media from all over the globe. Our media is also increasingly produced transculturally, with influences from global cultures. In this module, we consider the opportunities and challenges of studying media in a transnational context. Designed specifically for international students, we reflect on how you navigate your experiences of studying media in different countries, intellectual environments, and academic systems. The module will provide opportunities for you to draw on the strength of your own transcultural backgrounds, your international and cross-cultural media experiences and understandings to decolonise media studies.
This module is only available to international students from designated partner universities and programmes who have not taken Part 1 in Lancaster.
Want to "go viral"? In this module you will make stuff: tweets, blogs, videos, GIFs, wikis, music mash-ups, photo essays, machinima, memes. We will hang out in social media worlds like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pirate Bay, 4chan, Second Life, World of Warcraft, Know Your Meme, tumblr. You will learn to tie all of these media and platforms together into a viral video and social media campaign. You will become digitally literate while at the same time exploring the most cutting edge new media theory. When you complete this module you will know how to make most types of simple digital media, you will develop a portfolio of content that may assist you in entrepreneurial work in the new media industries, and most importantly you will understand how new media are challenging existing forms of culture, politics, law, and business.
This module comprises a written dissertation (8,000 words) or a media project (4,000 words + practical project) that students will complete in their final year. It offers students the opportunity to undertake an independent piece of research (under supervision) and to apply their understanding of key concepts, theories and debates in media and culture to their own individual dissertation or project.
Students will plan, present and design a proposal in tutorial groups, with a detailed, step-by-step web-based guide available for extra support. They will develop an idea for a research project, work out what is possible, which methods to use, and begin to plan it. They will then communicate their dissertation proposal to other students and then write it up in a way that clearly states their research topic, aims and methods, and where it situates within wider sociological debates.
Students will carry out data collection and analysis, and write it up as a dissertation. They will meet regularly with their supervisors to discuss their progress. Media projects may include creative/journalistic writing, audio production, video materials, artefacts, photographs or online campaigns, materials and environments.
This module will explore how the politically powerful and the politically radical use the internet to consolidate and revolutionise the distribution of power around the globe.
Like many communication platforms before it, the internet is mobilised by the politically and economically powerful as well as those seeking radical change. However, unlike other platforms, it has created an almost universally accessible platform for public dialogue. Pro-democracy revolutionaries, freedom hackers, feminist mediasmiths, anti-capitalists, data leakers, and others use the internet to organise their social movements. Conversely, those opposed to the liberal project, such as authoritarians and extremist groups, also use the affordances of the internet to distribute their message and rally their supporters.
This module examines these issues and investigates the implications of “big data” control by governments and corporations. The module looks also at the understanding social networkers and other content uploaders have of this “big data” control along with the consequences that it comes with.
What does it mean to be global? How can we navigate global structures of power and meaning in and with media?
You will explore media products from different regions to prepare you for researching and working in a global media landscape. This includes exploring how issues of identity, 'race' and postcoloniality come into play in debates about globalisation.
This module uses case studies of disasters (technical and social) to explore these questions and what sociology can teach us about them.
How do we make sense of the various understanding of being a fan nowadays? How has the experience of being part of a media audience transformed over the decades in different parts of the world? In what ways do fan culture and audience community manifest social transformations in both the local and global scale?
This module aims to provide you with a critical understanding of fandom and audiences in a global and transnational context. You will first be introduced to the contested concepts and typologies of ‘audience’ and ‘fan’ and the cultural hierarchy of knowledge underneath theses definitions. The module will focus on four dimensions – participation, pleasure, performance, and power – by investigating fan culture and audience communities of a wide range of transmedia texts (television, music, film, and other media) in a global perspective. You will analyse the multi-layered dynamics between individual fan, fan community, audience participation, media texts, and the industry through sociological and interdisciplinary lenses, for example, cultural studies, feminist studies, queer studies, and postcolonial studies.
This module investigates gender inequalities within society through a focus on historical and contemporary debates in feminist theory and activism. The module has an `intersectional` focus that means we will consider gender inequalities as bound up with other forms of discrimination and marginalisation, particularly racial and ethnic inequalities, disability and social class.
The module will challenge you to think about `what feminism means today` through a consideration of key aspects of feminist thought and activism from the late 1960s onwards. We will consider the continued relevance of the idea of ‘The Personal is Political’ and ‘consciousness raising’. We will overview feminist approaches to social research and explore feminist interventions in practices of gender inequality, for example inequalities in paid and unpaid work, childcare and women’s health. You will complete an intergenerational interview research project on ‘women, work and social change’ through which you will analyse and reflect upon your experience of the research process.
We will also take the feminist manifesto as a central document which expresses lived experiences of gender inequalities and collective desire for social change. Through some practices of inequalities, such as art, beauty contests, capitalism and patriarchy, we will explore the contemporary resonance of ideas such as black feminisms, art activism, the occupy movement and backlash.
By the end of the module you will have been given the opportunity to become familiar with some of the key debates within feminism today. We aim for you to be able to make connections between feminist theory and forms of feminist practice. The module engages you in debate, original research and feminist activism through analysis of varied media including academic texts, advertising, art, film, news media and social media.
In this module, you will learn about the basics of journalism -- reporting and storytelling using digital technologies. From audio recording and video production to writing, photography, and innovations using data, technology, and interviews, this module is an introduction to journalism of today and tomorrow. You will also interact with key theories and practices of journalism, discussing and debating international perspectives. In the end, you will have a final journalistic product based on a story of your selection.
Belonging to a nation is widely seen to be as natural as belonging to a family or a home. This module will explore how such assumptions about national belonging come about by introducing students to a range of theoretical approaches and debates.
You will explore how notions of belonging are socially constructed, how the nation is defined, who belongs and who doesn’t. The module addresses these notions by examining what everyday practices, discourses and representations reveal about the ways people think about, and inhabit, the nation. The module also pays particular attention to nation formation in relation to debates about multiculturalism, diversity and migration and asks: What are the impacts of migration and multiculturalism on definitions of the nation? How is multiculturalism defined and perceived?
Although focus will be on the example of Britain, the issues raised will be of interest to all students concerned with the effects of nationalisms and ideas of belonging and entitlement, which many countries of the contemporary world are presently debating in the context of the 'Age of migration' (Castles and Miller 1998).
This module addresses contemporary debates in sociology and cinema by focusing on a single film each week. Its overall aim is to employ cinema for the purpose of social diagnosis.
The module engages with cinema as a social fact, before linking together cinema (producing images of the social) and sociality (socialisation of the image) for analysis.
This module analyses the relationship between society and terror, taking point of departure in the discussion of 9/11 and the political responses it has provoked. The module focuses on how different forms of terror are related to the changing nature of society and how terror can be theorized from a sociological point of view. It also explores how the study of terror can contribute to the discipline of sociology. An example of concepts covered are: terror, the war against terrorism, dispositif, nihilism, flow, consumerism, post-politics, politics of security.
Our annual tuition fee is set for a 12-month session, starting in the October of your year of study.
Our Undergraduate Tuition Fees for 2024/25 are:
Home | International |
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£9,250 | £23,750 |
There may be extra costs related to your course for items such as books, stationery, printing, photocopying, binding and general subsistence on trips and visits. Following graduation, you may need to pay a subscription to a professional body for some chosen careers.
Specific additional costs for studying at Lancaster are listed below.
Lancaster is proud to be one of only a handful of UK universities to have a collegiate system. Every student belongs to a college, and all students pay a small college membership fee which supports the running of college events and activities. Students on some distance-learning courses are not liable to pay a college fee.
For students starting in 2023 and 2024, the fee is £40 for undergraduates and research students and £15 for students on one-year courses. Fees for students starting in 2025 have not yet been set.
To support your studies, you will also require access to a computer, along with reliable internet access. You will be able to access a range of software and services from a Windows, Mac, Chromebook or Linux device. For certain degree programmes, you may need a specific device, or we may provide you with a laptop and appropriate software - details of which will be available on relevant programme pages. A dedicated IT support helpdesk is available in the event of any problems.
The University provides limited financial support to assist students who do not have the required IT equipment or broadband support in place.
In addition to travel and accommodation costs, while you are studying abroad, you will need to have a passport and, depending on the country, there may be other costs such as travel documents (e.g. VISA or work permit) and any tests and vaccines that are required at the time of travel. Some countries may require proof of funds.
In addition to possible commuting costs during your placement, you may need to buy clothing that is suitable for your workplace and you may have accommodation costs. Depending on the employer and your job, you may have other costs such as copies of personal documents required by your employer for example.
The fee that you pay will depend on whether you are considered to be a home or international student. Read more about how we assign your fee status.
Fees are set by the UK Government annually, and subsequent years' fees may be subject to increases. Read more about fees in subsequent years.
You will be automatically considered for our main scholarships and bursaries when you apply, so there's nothing extra that you need to do.
You may be eligible for the following funding opportunities, depending on your fee status:
Unfortunately no scholarships and bursaries match your selection, but there are more listed on scholarships and bursaries page.
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We also have other, more specialised scholarships and bursaries - such as those for students from specific countries.
Browse Lancaster University's scholarships and bursaries.
The information on this site relates primarily to 2024/2025 entry to the University and every effort has been taken to ensure the information is correct at the time of publication.
The University will use all reasonable effort to deliver the courses as described, but the University reserves the right to make changes to advertised courses. In exceptional circumstances that are beyond the University’s reasonable control (Force Majeure Events), we may need to amend the programmes and provision advertised. In this event, the University will take reasonable steps to minimise the disruption to your studies. If a course is withdrawn or if there are any fundamental changes to your course, we will give you reasonable notice and you will be entitled to request that you are considered for an alternative course or withdraw your application. You are advised to revisit our website for up-to-date course information before you submit your application.
More information on limits to the University’s liability can be found in our legal information.
We believe in the importance of a strong and productive partnership between our students and staff. In order to ensure your time at Lancaster is a positive experience we have worked with the Students’ Union to articulate this relationship and the standards to which the University and its students aspire. View our Charter and other policies.
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