Professor Myria Georgiou

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Media and Communications. This course is available on the MPhil/PhD in Data, Networks and Society, MPhil/PhD in Media and Communications, MSc in Gender, Media and Culture, MSc in Media and Communications (Media and Communications Governance) and MSc in Media and Communications (Research). This course is not available as an outside option.

In order to accommodate academic staff leave, and in order to maintain smaller group sizes, this course is controlled access, meaning there is a limit to the number of students who can be accepted.

This course examines key concepts and critical perspectives on the processes of communication that underpin social, economic and cultural relations across diverse spheres of modern life. It takes an interdisciplinary and theoretical perspective, comparing the claims and contribution of selected key approaches of communication in order to understand and critique the symbolic and material power of communication media. With a substantive focus on the shifts from mass to networked media and from national to globalised communication processes, the course offers a selective introduction to key approaches in communication. It examines a series of critical perspectives, drawing on current research debates in the field of media and communications and beyond. The course is team taught by active researchers in the field of media and communications and aims to enable students to develop their critical understanding of the communication processes central to the contemporary media and communications environment.

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars totalling a minimum of 20 hours across Michaelmas Term. This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of term.

All students are expected to complete advance reading, prepare seminar presentations, and submit an essay of 1500 words. 

• Benjamin, R. (2019) Race after Technology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Castells, M. (2009) Communication Power, Oxford University Press.
• Chadwick, A. (2013) The Hybrid Media System, Oxford University Press.
• Choulilaraki, L. and Georgiou, M. (2022) The Digital Border. NYU Press.
• Couldry, N. and U. Mejias (2019) The Cost of Connection. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Curran, J. and Park, M.J. (ed) (2000) De-Westernizing Media Studies (Communication and Society), Routledge.
• Dutton, W.H. (2013) The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies. Oxford University Press.
• Georgiou, M. (2013) Media and the City, Polity Press.
• Hall, S. (ed.). (1999) Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices, Sage.
• Iqani, M. and F. Resende (eds.) (2019) Media and the Global South: Narrative Territorialities, Cross-cultural Currents, Routledge.
• Mansell, R. (2012) Imagining the Internet: communication, innovation, and governance, Oxford University Press.
• McLuhan, M. (2001[1964]); Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Routledge.
• Silverstone, R. (2007) Media and Morality, Polity Press.
• Udupa, S. (2018) Making news in Global India,Cambridge University Press.
• van Dijck, J. (2013) The Culture of Connectivity, Oxford University Press.

Essay (100%, 3000 words) in the LT.

This course offers a critical understanding of processes of communication and the ways they shape political, cultural and economic life.

A stimulating and challenging entry point to theories and concepts associated with processes of communication, this course provides students with tools to understand the formation and consequences of communication for social, political and cultural life.

Students' comments

"Theories are useful for dissertation/other classes on the course."