Mediastudies

How do algorithms make sense of our digital activities to determine what we see and do online? How is big data affecting our daily lives? How does digital literacy empower people to navigate digital societies?

This programme offers students the opportunity to gain cutting-edge knowledge of the digital transformations that profoundly change society. New media technologies and platforms are increasingly central to people’s daily lives. Many activities, from doing business to getting information and organizing our health care, are now moving online. The data this generates allows for large-scale data mining and algorithmic filtering. This opens up opportunities to enhance our life, but also raises ethical issues and pushes us to thoroughly understand and reflect on the implications. By critically engaging with the role of digital media in our day-to-day lives, you will understand the wider consequences of our growing reliance on data for society, policy and business. By taking a digital literacy perspective, this MA empowers you to address these challenges of datafication.

Sign up now for the Master's Week from 18-22 November!

Want to understand how new media technologies are used to create innovative formats and ways of storytelling, and how media innovation and start-up culture are rooted in creative processes?

In this MA students explore how media are produced and (re-)used in a digital era. You study how new media technologies enable innovative formats and distinctive practices of media use, re-use and consumption. Key to this MA track is the insight that all innovation starts from creativity. Yet new start-ups in cultural and media production also need to balance commercial interest and creative drive. Students are invited to put academic knowledge into creative practice - building upon a profound understanding of how media industries have developed over time, how media genres evolve and how changing media (re-)use plays into economic, policy, organizational, labour and legal issues, including piracy, web streaming, and remixing of media content.

Why do some posts go viral on social media and others do not? How can social media analysis be used in business and policy decisions? How do platforms like Facebook change how we live and do business?

This MA programme offers a critical exploration of social media within contemporary networked societies and trains students to work with (big) data in a responsible way. Social media have changed the fabric of everyday life and society. This has had important implications for how we inform ourselves, with whom we connect and in which ways, how we organize our daily lives, and how we perform as citizens. Knowledge of the ways these quickly emerging communication infrastructures are fundamentally transforming society is indispensable. At a time when intensive data-gathering and analysis is key for companies and governments, this MA programme’s theoretical approach to social media and their data-driven impact on society helps students in understanding and reflecting on critical issues in order to respond to current societal transformations. From a practical perspective, students are trained to investigate social media data in the context of social, political and economic change.

Sign up now for the Master's Week from 18-22 November!