BA Digital Media and Communication

Compulsory modules

Introduction to Digital Communication and Creation

Explore how digital tools and platforms are used to communicate in contemporary culture and acquire practical skills in using digital platforms such as digital exhibitions, interactive mapping, and multimedia storytelling.

Digital Influence: Techniques and Strategies

Investigate communicative practices of digital influencers through the lens of media and communication studies as well as applied linguistics. You'll examine how influencers construct authenticity, engage in self-branding, and perform microcelebrity identities across various social media platforms.

English Language and Society

Understand how language operates in social groups, this will provide you with a basis for further in-depth study in digital communication.

Optional modules

Globalisation and Language

Learn how languages spread across the world and explore debates around linguistic imperialism, political dimensions of language use, and language policies. You'll consider the effects of technology and migration on the linguistics of regions worldwide.

Approaches to Film

Critically interpret film texts and discover the conventions of fiction and non-fiction cinema. Explore cinema as a diverse, global and transcultural medium, focusing on historical and cultural contexts.

Shelf life

Become acquainted with English literature's material dimension and how writers, both past and present, have depicted the library as a symbol. As you study, you'll interpret poems, novels and plays, and investigate books and other archival documents as physical objects.

Optional Language or University Wide Modules

Study a module from outside your department to enhance your understanding of history and culture. Alternatively, you can learn one of ten languages offered by the University at a level appropriate for you.

These are the modules we currently offer for 2024/25 entry. They may be subject to change as we regularly review our module offerings to ensure they're informed by the latest teaching and research methods.

Please note that the University cannot guarantee that all optional modules will be available to all students who may wish to take them.

You can also register your details with us to receive information about your course of interest and study and life at the University of Reading.

Compulsory modules

Language and Digital Media

Examine how digital media and AI reshape language use in everyday life. You'll critically analyse real online communication using tools and theories from media studies and sociolinguistics, while gaining practical skills in digital content creation and collaborative communication.

Communicating with AI

Learn the technical and linguistic principles behind generative AI and how to use it to produce effective communication products.

Discourse Analysis

Discover key methodological frameworks and analytical approaches to describe language and apply your knowledge to a variety of communicative contexts.

Optional modules

The Business of Books

You'll cover the history and development of modern trade publishing and have focused sessions on some of its key players, including publishers and literary agents. Through a combination of theoretical, methodological, and hands-on teaching sessions and workshops, you'll study the role and function of books in historical and institutional contexts including libraries, bookshops, publishing houses, and board rooms.

Film, Forms and Cultures

Discover the rich variety of film forms and explore critical and conceptual issues of form, including theoretical perspectives, questions of form, and form's meaning and politics.

Language and Gender

Address real-world problems such as gender-based discrimination and inequalities in different settings. You'll analyse sociolinguistic research on gendered language over the last 40 years.

Sociolinguistics

Understand how sociolinguistic theories can help to solve practical issues such as discrimination, inequality, and political polarization. This will equip you with analytical tools that you can apply to everyday situations.

Creative Writing: Creative Non-Fiction

Study memoirs, essays, blog posts, long-form journalism, biography, and auto-fiction as you explore the exciting and ever-evolving contemporary genre. As you study these texts, you'll write your own piece of creative non-fiction and support others with creative feedback.

Design Discourse

Engage with graphic design history, theory and thinking to explore the ideas that underpin contemporary design practice. Examine the history of graphic communication, discuss key theories, analyse contemporary debates, practice visual analysis and discover research in design. You'll build a deeper understanding of the social, cultural, ecological and political contexts that surround the discipline and learn core research methods.

Optional Language or University Wide Modules

Study a module from outside your department to enhance your understanding of history and culture. Alternatively, you can learn one of ten languages offered by the University at a level appropriate for you.

These are the modules we currently offer for 2024/25 entry. They may be subject to change as we regularly review our module offerings to ensure they're informed by the latest teaching and research methods.

Please note that the University cannot guarantee that all optional modules will be available to all students who may wish to take them.

You can also register your details with us to receive information about your course of interest and study and life at the University of Reading.

Compulsory modules

Language in Professional Communication

Investigate the use of language and communication in professional contexts, which will provide you with increased awareness of the challenges and opportunities faced by graduates entering the global workforce.

You'll also select one of the following:

Professional Communication Project

Apply your knowledge and skills of digital media and communication, enhance your employability and increase your confidence and collaboration skills by undertaking a professional placement. Opportunities could include designing promotional content, communication campaign or social media marketing.

OR

Dissertation

Selecting a topic within digital media and communication, you'll design and implement a study, read widely on your chosen subject, and critically evaluate different framework or applications to produce an extensive piece of original research.

Optional modules

Discovering Archives and Collections

Develop your interest in careers in the archives sector through placements based internally at the University's Special Collections or externally at the Berkshire Record Office. You'll grow a practical understanding of the industry as you develop your research, as well as oral, written, and other professional skills.

Communication and Persuasion in Business

Explore the characteristics of effective communication in written and spoken form, including rhetorical theory, communication in different contexts, and your own use of language in the workplace and beyond.

Scriptwriting for Stage and Screen

Create original scripts and develop your critical understanding of key storytelling issues such as narrative, character, dialogue, and place. Your scriptwriting practice will include both individual and collaborative forms of writing and rewriting, and you'll engage with discourses around scriptwriting emerging from both theatre pedagogy and screenwriting studies, including projects for decolonising stage and screen writing traditions.

Intercultural Communications

Explore how people of different discourse systems or nationalities communicate with one another in various face-to-face and digitally mediated contexts. You'll discuss how assumptions and values that have been constructed or adopted within a specific culture group influence the ways in which people successfully communicate with each other as well as experience miscommunication.

Introduction to Corpus Linguistics

Explore the key concepts of Corpus Linguistics, including frequency, collocation, concordances, and keywords. Learn how to use computational corpus-based tools and methods to study a variety of linguistic and semantic features, registers, and genres.

Language and Power

Language is a powerful tool that can construe reality, challenge power, harm and discriminate, and foster social cohesion. You'll investigate a range of genres, discourse, and theoretical approaches to disclose a text's underlying ideological stance.

Optional Language or University Wide Modules

Study a module from outside your department to enhance your understanding of history and culture. Alternatively, you can learn one of ten languages offered by the University at a level appropriate for you. 

These are the modules we currently offer for 2024/25 entry. They may be subject to change as we regularly review our module offerings to ensure they're informed by the latest teaching and research methods.

Please note that the University cannot guarantee that all optional modules will be available to all students who may wish to take them.

You can also register your details with us to receive information about your course of interest and study and life at the University of Reading.