BA (Hons) Communication and Media with a Year in Industry

Overview

From politics and human rights, to celebrity and culture: you will learn how such ideas are influenced, expressed and shared. You will have the opportunity to explore a wide range of media and communication forms, analysing how they are organised as text, how they represent the world to us and ourselves to the world (from global power politics to constructions of individual identity), and how the media industries are organised to produce and profit from them.

This four-year programme combines our three-year Communication and Media programme with the opportunity to take a salaried placement of approximately 40 weeks with a relevant employer in your third year. Your placement will allow you to apply your learning in the workplace, as well as preparing you for your future career.

Programme in detail

During your first year, you will develop your foundational understanding and academic skills through core modules in media, communication and language. As your degree progresses, you will have the opportunity to tailor your studies through a wide range of optional modules in
topics such as political communication, screen media, virtual worlds, digital cultures, media writing, language and public relations.

Your second year comprises of one compulsory module, the aim of which is to prepare you to spend your third year on placement. The rest of your modules will be made up entirely of options, enabling you to tailor your studies to your own specific interest, or a specialist strand of study.

Year Three is spent on a paid placement within an organisation in the media industry, broadly defined. You will be supported by the Department and the School of the Arts throughout, and your reflexive written account of the experience will contribute towards your final degree result.

In your final year, you will choose once again from a generous and diverse range of optional modules, which may include a dissertation or independent study project.

Career prospects

Our graduates have gone on to careers including broadcasting, journalism, social media, advertising and marketing, corporate communications and public relations, arts administration, political campaigning (including political parties, trade unions and charities), management, government, and the civil service, as well as teaching in universities, colleges and schools.

Former graduates include a television documentary maker, a BBC Radio 1 DJ, senior journalists at local and national newspapers, a partner in a New York-based advertising company and the features editor of a music weekly.

Recent employers

Previous employers have included, the BBC, the Independent newspaper, Red Union Films, Big Bear Films, Maya Vision International, TalkTalk Business Communications, the Children’s Heart Federation, Liverpool Biennial and the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce.