Digital Media and Culture (MA) (2023 Entry)
Explore our Digital Media and Culture taught Master's degree.
Digital Media and Culture MA focuses on how digital processes are transforming culture, the economy and society. Become trained in the tools to understand it, and use digital media creatively and critically at Warwick's Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies.
Course overview
Digital media today affect all aspects of everyday, professional and public life, and understanding its significance requires interdisciplinary knowledge. Based at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM) at the University of Warwick, the MA Programme in Digital Media and Culture is an advanced one-year postgraduate degree that addresses the role of digital technologies, media, and infrastructures in relation to culture, economics, politics, and society.
Drawing on multiple disciplines, the degree supports critical approaches to key topics in digital culture, including:
- Platformisation
- Participatory culture
- Media activism
- Digital labour and political economy
- Privacy and surveillance
- Behavioural design
- Data critique
- Environmental sustainability
Our teaching combines theory, research methods, and creative practice. By selecting from a diverse offering of modules, students will have, for instance, the opportunity to learn data analytics and visualisation, to engage with speculative design and media art, and to discuss concepts in fields ranging from software studies to environmental humanities.
Based at a research centre promoting cutting-edge scholarship in these areas, our degree is primarily research-driven. MA students will be encouraged to select their own path through the degree and contribute to the culture of CIM by attending invited talks, participating in workshops, and organising interdisciplinary symposiums.
General entry requirements
Minimum requirements
2:i undergraduate degree (or equivalent).
English language requirements
You can find out more about our English language requirementsLink opens in a new window. This course requires the following:
- Band B
- IELTS overall score of 7.0, minimum component scores of two at 6.0/6.5 and the rest at 7.0 or above.
International qualifications
We welcome applications from students with other internationally recognised qualifications.
For more information, please visit the international entry requirements pageLink opens in a new window.
Additional requirements
There are no additional entry requirements for this course.
Core modules
Approaches to the Digital
Computer networks, devices and infrastructure today undergird nearly all form of societal, political and cultural life. Police and hospitals, schools and transport, traffic lights and government bodies, elections, museums and artists rely on software systems for their everyday performance.
Whether used for tracking, organising, evaluating, creating, designing or communicating, digital technology and its use irreversibly transforms the fabric of everyday life, defining the horizon of the future. Given the widespread implications of such ‘digitalization,’ this module offers an introduction to how different disciplines beyond computer science have approached the digital methodologically and epistemologically.
Digital Objects, Digital Methods
Emerging digital research methods also become means through which such objects are sustained, thus co-creating dynamic objects, such as networks, databases, platforms, data visualizations, maps and many other new forms of social, cultural and public life.
This module offers an insight into these new and emerging societal and cultural entities and methodologies. We will take a number of digital objects relevant to the social sciences and humanities and analyse them using digital methods, including network analysis, software studies, content analysis, issue mapping, and others. Digital media research sits alongside social studies of computational technologies and cultural theory as the fields that emerging digital methods take inspiration from.
The module is open to students from all disciplines; no specific prior knowledge is required.
Dissertation
The CIM Master's dissertation is a piece of work (10,000 words) which addresses a single student-selected subject. The topic may concern any aspect of the subject matter of their Master's programme.
The dissertation is an exercise in independent study in which you can pursue a topic of interest. It allows you to further develop a range of independent research skills, including literature search and bibliography construction, theoretical argument, and generation/appraisal of empirical evidence.
Optional modules
Optional modules can vary from year to year. Example optional modules may include:
- Media Activism
- Data Visualisation in Science, Culture and Public Policy
- User Interface Cultures: Design, Method and Critique
- Visualisation Foundations
- Digital Sociology
- Platform, Economy and Society
- Ecological Futures: Science, Culture and Media
- Data Science Across Disciplines: Principles, Practice and Critique
Teaching
Modules in this course make use of a range of teaching and learning techniques, including, for example:
- Online Virtual Learning Environment
- Student Group and Project Work
- Lectures
- Seminars
- Reading and Directed Critical Discussion
- Independent Research by Students
- Practice-Based Activities
Class sizes
A typical seminar size for this course contains around 16 students.
Typical contact hours
There are around 7-9 hours contact hours per week, depending on optional modules chosen.
Assessment
A combination of essays, reports, design projects, technical report writing, practice assessments, group work and presentations and an individual research project (10,000 word dissertation).
Reading lists
Most departments have reading lists available through Warwick Library. If you would like to view reading lists for the current cohort of students you can visit our Warwick Library web pageLink opens in a new window.
Your timetable
Your personalised timetable will be complete when you are registered for all modules, compulsory and optional, and you have been allocated to your lectures, seminars and other small group classes. Your compulsory modules will be registered for you and you will be able to choose your optional modules shortly before joining us.
Your career
Graduates from these courses have gone on to work for employers including: AXA, BaiDu, GroupM, Just Eat, Skyscanner, The Labour Party and University of Warwick. They have pursued roles such as: authors, writers and translators; business and financial project management professionals; buyers and procurement officers; data analysts and product managers; marketing associate professionals; quality assurance and regulatory professionals and researchers.
Our department has a dedicated professionally qualified Senior Careers Consultant offering impartial advice and guidance together with workshops and events throughout the year. Previous examples of workshops and events include:
- Warwick careers fairs throughout the year
- Careers in AI and Data Science
- Discovering Careers in the Creative Industries
- Discuss What’s Next After Your CIM Master’s Degree
Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM)
The Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM) was established at Warwick in 2012 to foster innovative and experimental forms of knowledge production through a sustained focus on methodology. CIM is dedicated to expanding the role of interdisciplinary methods through new lines of inquiry that cut across disciplinary boundaries, both intellectually and institutionally.
Method is central to the formation and transformation of disciplinary knowledges, and the challenge of working across and in between disciplines is both exciting and pressing. Our research team is drawn from across the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and Sciences, with expertise in a variety of substantive domains.
Within Warwick, CIM is an advocate of interdisciplinary research and study. Beyond Warwick and beyond the academy, CIM explores new forms of public engagement, both with potential research users and with the experts, experimenters and institutions in business, civil society and government that are at the forefront of applied methodological innovation.
Find out more about us on our website.
Our Postgraduate courses
Tuition fees
Tuition fees are payable for each year of your course at the start of the academic year, or at the start of your course, if later. Academic fees cover the cost of tuition, examinations and registration and some student amenities.
Taught course fees Research course fees
Fee Status Guidance
We carry out an initial fee status assessment based on the information you provide in your application. Students will be classified as Home or Overseas fee status. Your fee status determines tuition fees, and what financial support and scholarships may be available. If you receive an offer, your fee status will be clearly stated alongside the tuition fee information.
Do you need your fee classification to be reviewed?
If you believe that your fee status has been classified incorrectly, you can complete a fee status assessment questionnaire. Please follow the instructions in your offer information and provide the documents needed to reassess your status.
Find out more about how universities assess fee status
Additional course costs
As well as tuition fees and living expenses, some courses may require you to cover the cost of field trips or costs associated with travel abroad.
For departmental specific costs, please see the Modules tab on the course web page for the list of core and optional core modules with hyperlinks to our Module Catalogue (please visit the Department’s website if the Module Catalogue hyperlinks are not provided).
Associated costs can be found on the Study tab for each module listed in the Module Catalogue (please note most of the module content applies to 2022/23 year of study). Information about module department specific costs should be considered in conjunction with the more general costs below:
- Core text books
- Printer credits
- Dissertation binding
- Robe hire for your degree ceremony
Scholarships and bursaries
Scholarships and financial support
Find out about the different funding routes available, including; postgraduate loans, scholarships, fee awards and academic department bursaries.
Living costs
Find out more about the cost of living as a postgraduate student at the University of Warwick.
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Here is our checklist on how to apply for research postgraduate degrees at the University of Warwick.
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