Compulsory modules

Social Media Content Creation 
This module introduces you to creating content for social media. You’ll work as a team to respond creatively to an industry brief and devise content in a range of formats that will connect with audiences. You will analyse what makes social media content compelling, exploring contemporary applications from marketing and entertainment to self-expression, art, storytelling, and activism. You’ll be introduced to professional practices and standards and develop skills in creative decision making, while developing an understanding of platforms, content, and audiences.

Marketing Fundamentals 
The ‘Marketing Fundamental’ module introduces you to the dynamic world of marketing through developing your understanding of the vital role it plays in all forms of organisations in many different sectors. Through this module, you will acquire an understanding of what marketing is, the purpose of marketing and how marketing operates in practice.  You will learn the key concepts, tools, and theories of relevance to marketers today including buyer behaviour, market segmentation, marketing research, relationship marketing and the marketing mix. 

Understanding and Producing Digital Media 
he role of digital media in contemporary politics and society is a hotly debated topic, and one that aspiring digital content producers need to be aware of. This module will allow you to think critically about the challenges and possibilities of a digital world and your place and responsibilities within it, enabling you to think critically and creatively about the social context for digital content production. The module provides a transition to University study by developing foundational study skills

Optional modules

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. 

Professional and Academic Development 1 
Our foundational professional development module is designed to help you identify and take advantage of your unique strengths. Using approved psychometric tools, you will learn about your strengths to uncover your inherent talents which will help you to shape your professional identity. This module offers a structured framework for you to reflect on your capabilities and areas for growth, supporting the development of your career plan. Through interactive workshops and guided reflection, you will learn to effectively apply your strengths in various professional scenarios.

Teams, People and Performance 
The ‘Teams, People, and Performance’ module focuses on enhancing practical skills for effective teamwork. It covers key concepts such as team dynamics, communication strategies, conflict resolution, and leadership roles. Students engage in hands-on activities, group projects, and case studies to apply theoretical knowledge in real-world scenarios. By the end of the module, participants will have gained essential experience in collaboration, problem-solving, and performance optimization within diverse team environments.

Module rules: You must choose at least one of the following modules: ‘Becoming a Cultural Citizen’ or ‘Professional and Academic Development 1’. 

Compulsory modules

Creative Marketing Communication in the Digital Age 
The ‘Creative Marketing Communication in the Digital Age’ module encourages you to explore the expanding marketing communication toolbox available to marketing professionals. Marketing Communication plays a pivotal role in connecting organisations with different target audiences and fostering positive relationships. Throughout this module, you will be introduced to core communication theories and concepts to help you experiment with how to optimise the marketing communication toolbox to develop creative and impactful results for organisations. 

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.

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.

Optional modules

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. 

Professional and Academic Development 2 
Using your commercial awareness and enterprise skills, you will tackle an actual organisational challenge, collaborating with a team gain first-hand experience of working with an organisation. This hands-on experience not only enhances your practical abilities but also encourages critical reflection on your personal and professional growth, steering you towards effective problem-solving and continued development of your professional identity.

Marketing and Society:  Issues, Impact and Implications 
The ‘Marketing and Society: Issues, Impact, and Implications’ module enables you to critically investigate the impact marketing practice can have on different organisations and stakeholders.  Throughout the module, you will engage in key debates around ethical and sustainable marketing practices, corporate social responsibility, digital disruptions, and global marketing strategies. By fostering a holistic understanding of the impact of marketing within society, you will emerge as a conscientious marketer who can balance profitability with societal well-being. 

Marketing Research: Principles, Process and Practice 
The ‘Marketing Research: Principles, Process and Practice’ module equips you with the core processes and practices to collect, interpret and present different forms of data to help inform organisational change and prepare you to face emerging challenges and opportunities within the marketplace. Over the course of the module, you will explore different digital and traditional marketing research tools and techniques to discover the role of marketing research within both day to day and strategic activities within different organisational contexts.

Data and Design 
Where data comes from and how it is put to work are important questions for today’s digital designers and creators. In this module, you will explore the politics and power of ‘datafication’ and examine its opportunities and challenges. You will then put this knowledge into practice by developing your skills in socially conscious design. You will think about how to design creative digital media products and projects with awareness of the social, economic, and political questions of design justice. 

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. 

Digital Curation and History  
Are you interested in learning how to display artefacts online and archive them digitally in order to capture and reveal their historical significance? Taught by historians, digital media specialists, and curators, this module develops your skills in historical interpretation and presentation for public and professional audiences. You’ll acquire techniques for collecting, organising, and preserving information; you’ll experiment with the best formats for storing and retrieving data; and you’ll address the ethics of access and representation in digital archives and websites.


Module rules:

• You must choose one from the following module options: ‘Professional Experience for Media (Year 2)’; ‘Pathways with Media: Developing Your Profile’; ‘Professional and Academic Development 2’.
  
  
• You can then choose either one of the following three 30-credit modules – ‘Marketing and Society: Issues, Impact and Implications’, ‘Marketing Research: Principles, Process and Practice’, ‘Data and Design’ – or you can choose two 15-credit modules from: Global Challenge Pathways options, ‘The American South: US Summer School (Level 5)’, and ‘Digital Curation and History’.

Compulsory modules

Digital Marketing in Action 
The ‘Digital Marketing in Action’ module builds on learning from the second year ‘Creative Marketing Communication in the Digital Age’ module for those of you interested in delving deeper into the digital side of marketing.  Throughout the module, you will investigate how Digital Marketing is utilised across various organisational contexts to create engaging, immersive, and memorable customer experiences. You will actively engage with existing and new digital marketing technology and tools to build your digital marketing expertise for the future.

Optional modules

Marketing Project 
In your final year of study, you will undertake a significant project that reflects the subject area of your degree. This is the opportunity to follow your own interests. We offer the flexibility of undertaking a solo project or working with a group to collaborate on a large project. Your solo project might include undertaking a piece of research or a Marketing report. If you prefer to work in a team, you might undertake a consultancy project for an organisation, or put on an event, helping you develop teamwork and project management experience. 

Digital Media Project 
Your project is the culmination of everything you’ve learned on your degree, where you’ll have the freedom to develop a project on a topic of your choosing. You can select from two pathways: a research project or professional content creation. On both you’ll develop independent project management skills. Guided by an expert supervisor, you’ll be supported to communicate your ideas and content to high academic and professional standards, putting into practice what you’ve learned, showcasing your voice and skills. 

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 on ‘Pathways with Media’, 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.  

Professional and Academic Development 3 
As a final-year student, you will compile and present your academic and project achievements in a professional portfolio that highlights your unique strengths. This module not only guides you to articulate your personal and professional attributes but also encourages reflection on your educational journey and career preferences. You will engage in recruitment and selection simulations, exploring both traditional CV and innovative no-CV approaches using various media. This comprehensive portfolio will enhance your job applications and facilitate a tailored transition into your chosen career paths.

Digital Showcase
The ‘Digital Showcase’ is your opportunity to demonstrate your digital skills through the creation of a comprehensive digital project. Students will select a focus area such as digital marketing, web development, data analytics, or multimedia production. You will develop and present your projects using cutting-edge tools and techniques. Emphasising creativity, technical proficiency, and practical application, this module allows you to showcase your digital talent.

Creative Branding: Creation, Strategy and Management 
The ‘Creative Branding: Creation, Strategy and Management’ module is for those of you who are interested in further developing your creative marketing skills. This module takes you into the intricate world of branding to explore the vital relationship between strategic brand management and creative brand management. You will actively participate in key discussions and activities around the concept of branding, brand equity and the art of brand creation to harness your creative marketing skills for future application.

Social Media Management 
Social media management skills are in demand across businesses, the public sector, charities, and political campaigns. This module will develop your content creation skills by exploring how communication is managed in organisations. You will learn how to manage integrated social strategies using analytics and insights to grow and engage audiences, working with real clients. You will place social media management in a critical context by thinking about the responsibilities and challenges involved in this fast-moving sector.

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. 

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.


Module rules:

• You must take one or the other of the project modules: ‘Marketing Project’ or ‘Digital Media Project’.
  
• You must take one of the following modules: ‘Professional Experience for Media (Year 3)’, ‘Employing Media: Putting Your Subject into Practice’, ‘Professional and Academic Development 3’, or ‘Digital Showcase’.