Compulsory modules

Exploring Business Foundations: Principles and Practices
This module introduces students to the essential concepts and practices in business, including basic economics, management principles, and the roles of marketing and finance. Students will learn about the structure of various business organizations and begin to understand the dynamics of the business world. The module allows students to think about the implications of different aspects of business functioning in an industry of their choice. 

Media Industries 
This module introduces you to key tools you can use to analyse the social contexts, cultures, politics, and economics of media industries. From huge corporations to content creators, go behind the scenes to find out how media is produced, funded, regulated, distributed, and made across the globe. You will learn how media ownership, profit, and work are changing, and the role they play in shaping the media that gets made. The module further develops your academic skills needed for success in your degree. 

Becoming a Cultural Citizen 
This module provides you with the foundational tools and skills you need to develop your student profile. You will learn about the different pathways in your cultural or creative field while developing your own identity as a cultural critic, creative, and citizen. You will explore and map out your personal and professional development goals and plans, ensuring you make the most of your time at university and beyond. You will gain professional skills in communication and team working.

Optional modules

Visual Representation  
This module builds your knowledge of how meaning is constructed, communicated, and interpreted in visual media texts, from advertising to news and social media. You will learn to conceptualise and analyse the power of media texts, applying ‘ways of seeing’ to your own thinking about how to be a responsible and reflective image producer. This module provides your transition to university by introducing foundational independent study skills and the use of professional software that you will use throughout your degree. 

Filmmaking Fundamentals 
This first-year practice-centred module provides you with the foundational technical knowledge and theoretical tools for approaching creative filmmaking work, and an understanding of the ethics of creative work in contemporary AI contexts. Whether your interests lie in film direction, cinematography or editing, you’ll develop skills in these varied areas of practice, building experience of digital camera-work and post-production tools. The final short film output will demonstrate your acquired technical skills and your creative application of theory and practice. 

History in Media and Film: The Presentation of the Past in Contemporary Culture  
The past is presented in many different ways, including in contemporary film and media. In this module you will consider ‘public history’, examine representations of the past in visual culture, and discuss the importance of these representations to collective memory, constructions of identity, and contemporary politics. Working with students from different subjects, you will begin to develop key skills for Humanities students, including how to evaluate and interpret sources and communicate your arguments to audiences of all backgrounds. 

Compulsory modules

Management Essentials: People, Processes, and Performance
Building on foundational knowledge, this module focuses on operational aspects of managing business - both small and large. Topics include the management of people and resources, understanding operational processes, and techniques for improving organisational performance. Students will explore case studies and participate in simulations to see management theories in action. The module allows students to think how people, processes and performance operate in an industry of their choice.

Storytelling for Change
Learn how to tell compelling and persuasive multimedia stories about the issues you care about. You will work with other students to analyse what makes multimedia stories impactful, exploring narrative structures, design concepts, storytelling applications, and interactive and transmedia elements. You will develop a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of storytelling across media forms and put this into practice. The module builds your project management skills in preparation for your final year project.

Optional modules

Promotional Cultures
Why is brand culture so ubiquitous in how we understand ourselves and our society, and the way we live our lives? You’ll investigate the histories and politics of marketing, advertising and consumerism, considering how and why promotional culture became such a key component of contemporary economies and societies. You’ll think critically about the social and political impacts of brand culture, including environmental harm, exploitation, and inequality. You’ll identify, discuss, and critically analyse key themes and trends in contemporary promotional culture. 

Researching Audiences and Users 
Understanding media audiences and users is fundamental to analysing how meaning is communicated and negotiated. This module provides you with the concepts and tools you need to understand how audiences interpret and participate in media. You will learn about the methods and approaches media researchers use to find out about audiences’ perspectives and experiences while gaining hands-on audience research skills. If you would like to do an independent research dissertation in your final year, this module provides essential preparation. 

Professional Experience for Media (Year 2) 
This module offers you the chance to contribute to the world outside Keele either through completing a work placement, a project for a client (or a series of projects for different clients), or working as a team to deliver a successful festival or event. You will be trained to showcase your creative and collaborative skills and abilities effectively before applying for an opportunity advertised through the module (or you can source your own, subject to it meeting the module’s requirements). 

Pathways with Media: Developing Your Profile 
This module broadens your knowledge of the variety of career pathways open to you, enabling and enable you to identify, analyse, and showcase your degree skills and experiences effectively. Through completing and reflecting on problem-based tasks relating to different sectors, such as telling the story of a business, or writing a funding proposal to support a film festival, you will build your creative and collaborative skills and learn how to articulate them in ways that will be attractive to employers. 

The American South: US Summer School (Level 5) 
Study Southern US culture on location! The American South is a distinctive but difficult to define geographical and cultural entity, and attitudes to the South range from celebration to derision. Studying with others from a range of disciplines, you will think through historical and current constructions of the US South through its history, literature, film, and wider culture. You spend four weeks at one of our partner universities taught by Keele staff, shaping your own research project with their support. 

Compulsory modules

Strategic Business Insights: Innovating and Competing
This advanced module focuses on strategic thinking and decision-making within the business ext. Students will examine how businesses can formulate strategies to maintain competitive advantage, adapt to changing markets, and innovate. The module includes discussions on global business challenges, sustainability, and the role of technology in business transformation. The module allows students to focus on strategic challenges facing organisations in an industry of their choice. 

Optional modules

Extended Media Project 
This is your chance to create a major media project, such as a narrative, documentary, or short film; a photographic project; or a multimedia display. Guided by an expert academic supervisor, you’ll integrate the practical skills and research methods acquired throughout the degree. You’ll present your work alongside an exhibition catalogue in a final year show. Having delivered and showcased an original project, you’ll have demonstrated your readiness for a wide variety of careers and enhanced your creative portfolio.

Media Dissertation 
The dissertation gives you the opportunity to produce a substantial piece of independent and original research. With the guidance of an expert supervisor, you will devise a research topic that engages with the issues that most interest you in Media and Communications. The dissertation is a good choice if you are considering advanced academic research at masters level, or wish to pursue a career in an area of the media and cultural industries relevant to your research. 

Podcast and Radio Production 
This practice-based module gives you the opportunity to develop your own podcast and learn audio storytelling techniques, production skills, and social marketing strategies to enable you to produce your own podcast and promote it to your target audience through an online platform, with advice and feedback from practitioners in an industry pitching session. We’ll also analyse podcast trends and explore the impact of podcasting on the media landscape, including its influence on public service broadcasting and podcast adaptation for TV. 

Media and Climate Change 
Are you passionate about telling new and more powerful stories about climate change, biodiversity loss and human-nature disconnection, the key environmental concerns of our time? This module develops your creative storytelling skills in the context of environmental communication. You will discover different approaches to environmental communication and learn how to devise effective stories responding to briefs set by external partners from the environmental sector. You will gain vital skills relevant to professional roles in a wide variety of communications, environment and sustainability related fields. 

Creative magazine production 
You’ll plan and produce a group digital 'journal' or 'magazine' focused on culture. Each group will negotiate the types of articles to include, and the design and style of the publication in relation to their chosen market and target audience. Your finished work will be published online, capable to be presented in various digital formats. You’ll refine the creative and collaborative skills built up so far; you’ll develop your awareness of audiences and markets; and you’ll have a product to showcase after graduation. 

Memes, trends, and vibes: participatory social media cultures 
Where do social media trends come from and what can they tell us about the politics and culture of our time? You’ll look in-depth at cultures of online participation, where marketers and users interact and contribute to the reproduction and circulation of content that promotes lifestyles and cultivates feelings or 'vibes'. You’ll engage creatively and critically with the aesthetics and cultures of social media memes, trends and vibes, because what’s 'trending' tells us lots about our specific historical moment. 

Social Media Work 
From Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to live streamers, influencers, and crowd workers, on this module you will explore what work really looks like in the global digital economy. You will deploy critical tools to understand the role that digital work plays in contemporary political and economic structures and apply this to analysis of working lives by engaging with guest Q&A sessions with workers. The module allows you to communicate your critical ideas about social media work in a creative format. 

Professional Experience for Media (Year 3) 
In your final year we offer you another opportunity to complete a work placement, a project for a client (or a series of clients), or work as part of a team to deliver a successful festival or event. Completed during the final stages of your degree, the module gives you cutting-edge experience of the sector you wish to enter following graduation as well as valuable employer contacts, thereby providing you with an effective career launchpad.  

Employing Media: Putting Your Subject into Practice 
Now you are preparing for life after graduation, this module enables you to put your degree skills into practice and work with employer-clients on a series of real-life projects. Enhancing the creative and collaborative skills you developed at level 5, Employing Media will trains you to work effectively with clients from a variety of settings, such as charities, publishers, museums, or even the construction sector, and will gives you the opportunity to present your work to your chosen employer-client.  

The American South: US Summer School (Level 6) 
Study Southern US culture on location! The American South is a distinctive but difficult to define geographical and cultural entity, and attitudes to the South range from celebration to derision. Studying with others from a range of disciplines, you will think through historical and current constructions of the US South through its history, literature, film, and wider culture. You spend four weeks at one of our partner universities taught by Keele staff, shaping your own research project with their support.