Prof Lee Edwards

This course is available on the BA in Social Anthropology and BSc in Social Anthropology. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course is not available to General Course students.

The course is open to final-year students from all undergraduate programmes, where regulations permit. If your programme is not listed above, you may still be able to take the course, please check with your Department to confirm.

The course offers you an opportunity to develop knowledge and expertise in media and communications, combining this with your passion for your subject and your personal interests, to deliver a ‘Showcase Portfolio’ that encapsulates your learning journey during your time at LSE and provides a framework for continued analysis and reflection through your personal and professional life.

The portfolio is an outward-facing, reflective exercise, allowing students to creatively communicate their LSE education and experience at the end of their time with the School. It is also an intellectual exercise: you will receive lectures and participate in seminars focused on media and communications theory and practice, to ensure you understand the social, political and cultural impact of media and communication on the world around us and its role as a powerful mode of public engagement and knowledge creation. This knowledge will also help you to understand how the ways industries associated with your ‘home’ discipline (e.g. the financial industry, the policy sector, the international development sector, the climate adaptation industry) are narrated, justified and understood as a result of the way they communicate, and the way media represent them.

During the course, you will develop a holistic approach to personal, academic and professional skills, identifying links between the course content, your disciplinary studies, and your personal and professional development. This will be facilitated through seminar discussions, study group tasks, and through the individual tutoring that you receive specifically related to your portfolio.

The course content will enable you not only to create a portfolio strategy that adopts the most appropriate mode of communication for your idea, but also to understand and reflect upon the potential impact of your own project on the audiences you reach. Alongside the lectures and seminars, you will receive individual tutorials to support the development of your specific portfolio, and will have access to a range of support for skills development (e.g. from LSE Life, and the Digital Skills Lab).

The course runs throughout the year. In the AT, the media and communications framework content is delivered. In the WT, students will work on their portfolios in conjunction with an assigned tutor. In the ST, the portfolio will be submitted and assessed, and a public exhibition held.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the AT. 2 hours of workshops and 2 hours and 30 minutes of help sessions in the WT.

In the AT, the course will adopt the standard model of 2 hours contact time per week, one hour lecture, and one hour seminar, delivered as a single block rather than in separate sessions.

In the WT, you will have regular weekly meetings with your individual tutor to support the development of your portfolio. In addition, one two-hour block session will be held with the course teachers, where you can seek advice about your draft portfolio (to be submitted in Week 8). Office hours will be available as normal for all staff teaching on the course, for you to use as required.

This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of the AT and the WT.

A formative piece of work submitted in the Week 11 of the AT will provide students with an opportunity to use the CampusPress platform for a pilot piece of portfolio content, reflecting on their current experiences.

Further formative feedback on the developing portfolio in AT Weeks 1, 3 ,5, and 7 will help the student further develop the full draft portfolio to bfore submissiontted in WT Week 8, so that feedback and guidance for the final portfolio submission is received before the Spring break.

• Arora, P. 2019. THe next billion users: DSigital life beyond the West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
• Athique, A. 2019. Transnational audiences: media reception on a global scale. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
• Baker, M. et al (eds) 2020. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media. London: Routledge.
• Cornelisson, J. 2020. Corporate communication: A guide to theory and practice. Los Angeles: SAGE
• Couldry, N. 2020. Media: Why it matters. Cambridge UK: Polity.
• Curran, J. et al 2016. Misunderstanding the internet. London: Routledge.
• Gill, R. 2007. Gender and the media. Cambridge: Polity
• Hall, S. 1997. Representation. London: SAGE
• Hardy, J. 2022. Branded content: The fateful merging of media and marketing. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
• Harvey, A. 2020. Feminist media studies. Cambridge: Polity
• Hodkinson, P. 2017. Media, Culture & Society. London: SAGE
• Lindgren, S. 2021. Digital media and society. London: SAGE.
• Silverstone, R. 1999. Why study the media? London: SAGE
• Webster, J. 2014. THe marketplace of attention: How audiences take shape in the digital age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Shome, R. & Hegde, R. Postcolonial approaches to communication: Charting the terrain, engaging the intersections. Communication Theory, 12(3): 249-270.
• Tench, R & Yeomans, E. Exploring public relations. Harlow, Essex: Pearson.

Portfolio (100%) in the ST.