MA by Research Journalism and Communications

Research a topic of your choice or work on an extended creative project. Boost your professional practice and develop high-level skills and knowledge to progress your career.

You’ll benefit from an experienced team of research-active scholars and industry practitioners who can offer supervision across a range of topics.

We support research in the following areas:

• ethics in sports journalism
• live reporting
• digital media in live sporting events
• sport communications

Current postgraduate research includes:

• ‘Post it to make it’: How Women’s Super League Players Frame Themselves on Social Media
• Musicians of the Movement: A chronological timeline of the influence of high-profile celebrity musicians’ Instagram posts on the Black Lives Matter movement.

Study style

You’ll have the opportunity to choose between a research-based or practice-based project. For example, write a thesis of 80,000 words for the research-based PhD (30,000 words for the MA by Research) or, for the practice-based option, create a piece of content or stage a multi-media event and accompany it with a much-shorter written component. As a practice-based student, you’ll have access to our state-of-the-art studios and equipment.

Students who haven’t already completed a relevant Master’s degree are normally required to complete two research-methods modules: Philosophy and Approaches to Research, and Methodologies and Methods. These sessions and their related assignments will help you lay the critical foundations for your project.

This research contributes to the research priority area Being Human: Past, Present and Future and Creative Practice as Research.