This class introduces you to the professional demands of multimedia journalism, equipping you with the techniques needed to create effective digital packages.

You'll learn about:

• news values
• generating ideas and sources
• online research techniques
• interviewing
• mobile media
• creating news
• features
• live blogs
• interactivity
• digital story-telling techniques
• audio/video recording and editing

This class enables you to develop a critical understanding of digital journalism production processes by working in a simulated news room over several weeks.

As a team you devise, launch and produce your own online publication and create a social media strategy to market it.

You'll gain direct experience of multimedia news operation through generating ideas, undertaking editorial planning, preparing content, and designing and editing pages. 

Most journalists are expected to demonstrate a detailed awareness of the journalist’s rights and responsibilities in their reporting.

You'll learn about:

• the Scottish legal system
• court structures and procedures
• defamation
• contempt of court
• legal restrictions on reporting courts, parliament and government
• copyright
• confidence and privacy including human rights legislation and media regulatory systems

This class gives you an understanding of key ethical issues in professional journalism, developing skills in recognising and solving ethical problems.

You'll learn about a journalist’s ethical responsibilities to their employer, target audience and the wider community.  

It'll enable you to analyse and critique key debates, apply appropriate ethical concepts, and develop an awareness of the professional choices that journalists face.

This class enables you to build on the skills learned in Semester 1 and put them towards a comprehensive portfolio which will showcase your skills and abilities to prospective employers.

You will have the opportunity to produce content across a variety of mediums, from news and feature writing to video and podcasts. You’ll be able to make use of professional-level equipment.

Information and Communication Technology offers a range of tools and opportunities for professionals in the field of media and communication.

These tools offer technical capabilities for interactive and data-driven storytelling, instant access to a global audience and a range of tools for visualising and analysing audience interaction with media content.

This class explores a variety of digital tools to learn how new affordances provided by digital technology can be used for journalism, media and communication. This is a fully practical classes organised as weekly two-hour laboratory sessions.

The class will focus on two key components:

1. designing information for online publications and
2. analysing media content and audience engagement.

The class will introduce a range of digital tools, providing a hands-on learning context for students.

This class will compliment knowledge provided by other classes in the MLitt in Media and Communication degree programme by providing an in-depth understanding of emerging digital media practices that are increasingly becoming integral elements of media and communication.

This class aims to provide you with the inspiration, mindset and skills you need to create new business ventures, or to prepare for self-managed portfolio careers within the context of the creative industries.

Its purpose is to afford the opportunity for students to develop their entrepreneurial ideas in a risk-free environment.

The class content includes:

• developing an idea
• finding your niche
• technological innovation in journalism
• freelance careers 
• new models of journalism

As well as learning new skills, they'll also be able to engage with guest speakers who have forged successful entrepreneurial careers in the media world.

By the end of the course, students will understand some of the key drivers that impact upon the successful creation and management of a new venture where journalism is a core skill, understand the skills and resources needed to create an entrepreneurial organisation, develop an awareness of the requirements of freelance journalism and gain knowledge of innovation in journalism.

This conceptual class explores many of the contradictions and consequences of how health is presented in the media.

The media’s role is to provide both information and entertainment, so we also examine entertainment media and its influence on health education, social norms, and stigmatisation.

After this class, students will understand better how illness and health are presented by the media, what contributes to such representations, and how that affects public attitudes and behaviours.

They will also begin to notice some of the health myths sold through the media and become a more discerning media consumers overall.

They will discover the disciplines of public health, health communication and risk communication and their many complexities.

Last, but not least, students will become better journalists or writers, not just about health, but about people.

This class explores the implications and futures of digital technology in communication. The class incorporates the range of digital communication, from mediated conversation, through social media, to blogging and the production and distribution of video content. The importance of the digital environment for politics and the labour market will also be explored. The class will also look at the transformative implications of digital communication for the culture industries, including music, television and cinema, along with the legal and regulatory implications of digital content in an international setting.

Concerns about the impact of humankind on the environment and the threat to planetary health caused by unsustainable patterns of production, consumption and management mean that there is a pressing need for this module which explores media, science and the environmental crisis.

This class provides students with a critical overview of key debates regarding science and environmental communications and focuses on how messages are produced, packaged, and circulated for diverse audiences with examples drawn from legacy media and contemporary social media platforms.

Students will thus gain an understanding of overarching theoretical approaches to science and the environment from the cross-cutting fields of Sociology of media; cultural studies; feminist research; critical race research and science and technology studies.

We will examine reporting of the climate emergency; analyse framing of microplastics in the media, explore the role of celebrities in shaping environmental campaigns and deconstruct assumptions about what constitutes ‘pollution’.

The module is assessed by an academic essay and a short blog post.

This class offers advanced study of the dominant media and communication theories, and their application across a number of international contexts and media platforms. As well as discussing a number of traditions in communication research, the class will reflect critically on trends and texts across a number of media contexts and genres, including popular cultural platforms and the coverage of politics. The class will also look to the implications of international media on the mediation and public understanding of international coverage of conflict and terrorism.

This class will acquaint you with the field of strategic communication and the major theories of persuasion. It will explore the process of communicating purposefully from its different stages and thus help you form a well-rounded theoretical understanding of its many facets and complexities. The class will also combine theory and practice by asking you to apply the acquired theoretical perspectives onto professional scenarios.

This allows you to explore a journalism studies topic at length through robust research methods and analysis.

Suitable subjects include:

• journalism ethics
• the media’s institutional and financial frameworks
• the practice of journalism including textual usage, social media and media effects
• journalism’s social context

The production dissertation enables you to investigate and produce a piece, or a series of pieces, of original digital journalism at length. You will create a substantial multimedia artefact/project of your own work that demonstrates high quality journalism skills and technical proficiency. You will utilise a range of appropriate story-telling platforms e.g. online, audio, video, photography, interactivity, captions and graphics in order to effectively interpret your chosen subject.