This course aims to:

• provide students with an understanding of foundational theories in communications and media studies, enabling them to critically analyse media practices and their impact on society
• examine the development of media technologies and communication practices, and how they have shaped and been shaped by social, cultural, and political forces
• investigate the effects of media on audiences and public opinion, focusing on how media content influences behaviour, perception, and societal norms
• explore the role of media in communication, including digital media and the impact of social media, online platforms, and digital convergence on information dissemination and consumption
• enable students to apply theoretical concepts to real-world media scenarios, using case studies and practical examples to understand the complexities of media in a globalised world.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• explain key theories and concepts in communications and media studies
• analyse the influence of media on public opinion, culture, and social behaviour, using relevant theoretical frameworks
• evaluate the role of digital media in contemporary communication, including its effects on information dissemination and audience engagement
• critically assess media messages and their implications within various cultural, political, and social contexts.
• apply theoretical knowledge to real-world media and communication scenarios through case studies, projects, discussions, and an independent research project or dissertation.

This course aims to:

• provide students with an understanding of research methodologies relevant to communication studies
• equip students with the skills to design effective research projects, including the formulation of research questions and selection of appropriate research methods
• train students in various data collection techniques, such as surveys, interviews, content analysis, and experiments, enabling them to gather reliable and valid data
• encourage students to analyse critically and interpret research findings, to assess the strengths and limitations of different research strategies
• prepare students to apply research methods and strategies to address real-world communication challenges, enabling them to contribute effectively to academic, professional, and industry-related projects

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• explain key research methods used in communication studies
• design research projects that effectively address communication-related issues
• demonstrate proficiency in collecting, organising, and analysing data using appropriate
• research tools and techniques, such as surveys, interviews, and content analysis
• critically evaluate the quality and validity of research findings, recognising the strengths and limitations of various research methods
• apply research methods and strategies to real-world communication problems, effectively translating theoretical knowledge into practical solutions

How does media make worlds? From data to water, cable to cloud, this course examines the relations between elemental phenomena and communication systems, exploring the deepening relationships between environment, media and culture. The material imprint of media weighs heavily on our climate, from the extraction of critical rare minerals, to fuel consumption and land use, the natural world affords and bears the weight of communication infrastructures. This course is informed by emergent theories from infrastructure humanities, environmental humanities and critical media studies that understand media objects beyond their traditional role as carriers of messages. This is an interdisciplinary course that considers questions that include: How do media affects systems of perception, value, and feeling alongside their lived environments? How does media not only represent the environment, but constitute it? How does thinking with elements (e.g. temperature, atmosphere, seawater) allow for an expanded understanding of media systems?

This course aims to:

• assess key theories, debates and perspectives in media ecology and environmental media studies
• analyse a range of media elements, interfaces, and infrastructures shaped by social, environmental, and political forces
• investigate the relation between media ecology and their affective dimensions, questioning how media influences environments
• critically evaluate media forms, to rethink what constitutes media and to assess their role in systems of aesthetic representation and social organisation
• apply theoretical concepts and humanities methods to material infrastructures and real-world media objects.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• analyse key concepts in media ecology and environmental media studies
• analyse the relationships between media as environment and environmental media
• evaluate the influence of media ecologies on systems of communication and affective relations including emotions, value, and behaviour
• critically interpret the role of media ecologies in structuring systems of aesthetic representation and social organisation
• apply theoretical knowledge and abstract concepts to real-world environments and media forms through case studies, group projects and field trip

This course asks: how can policy communication be made more effective? Students will take a practice-based approach to policy communication across different media. Students will examine a range of policy communications across key areas, such as energy, food, poverty, and well-being, to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and produce alternatives. The course encourages a concretely place-based approach. Sessions will include fieldwork, assessing community responses to policy communications, and archive research to consider policy communications in the context of the past and present. The course aims to prepare students to be able to apply infrastructural humanities and critical media studies frameworks to understand problems and solutions around the material systems that shape people's lives and the social organisations that emerge in response to them, and communications that circulate from both community and policy-makers to frame and engage with these.

This course aim to:

• Explore the strengths and failings of contemporary policy communication through place-based methodologies, fieldwork, and creative practice.
• Build a systemic picture of the context in which policy communications operate and their role in shaping that context.
• Provide students with real-world experience of engaging with communities and policy-makers, translating theoretical knowledge into work experience through policy, community, and third-sector workshops and the creation of policy communication.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• analyse critically policy communications across a range of media with respect to wider socio-cultural and historical contexts.
• communicate effectively in real-world contexts with policy-makers, community and third-sector organisations.
• produce effective policy communications across a range of key policy areas.

This course examines the evolving forms and genres of communication across history and geography, beginning with inscriptions on stone and wax tablets and ending with file transfers and email. Combining current research in media and information studies with materialist approaches to bureaucracy and 'paperwork', we will consider how the development of new systems and technologies for storing, organizing and transmitting information changes communication landscapes, affording new possibilities for both controlling and disrupting how we communicate across national boundaries. Our aim throughout the course will be apply insights from analysing past and current media transformations to enable us to shape the future of global communication.

This course aim to:

• Introduce the dominant forms and genres of communication and information management in the past and today.
• Identify how and why the material forms of communication have changed over time.
• Isolate the logistical and ideological effects of communication genres within specific organizations and communities.
• Enable critical reflection on how forms and genres of communication structure thought and behaviour.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Understand the evolution of communication genres in relation to structures of information management more broadly.
• Analyse how the material forms of communication shape institutional, national, and multinational communication networks.
• Make historically informed arguments about the forms of modern communication media.
• Work collaboratively to propose innovative forms of communication that support a more equitable vision of global communication.

In this course, students will ask: how do we build more equitable and sustainable ways of producing the arts and culture? Students will assess, interrogate, and examine how the infrastructures that support the production, dissemination, and sustainability of arts and culture rely upon effective communication strategies. The course approaches communications through the field of infrastructure humanities. It understands “infrastructure” as both the technical systems of circulation that enable creativity (e.g., music venues, theatres, funding bodies) and as a political and aesthetic ideas about who and what gets to participate in the creative industries. This course emphasizes case studies to explore specific real-world problems within Glasgow that are widely applicable to the larger, international cultural sphere. Our course will work with community and/or industry partners from across the Glasgow arts landscape to introduce students to immediate issues facing their organizations and to assess the role that communication plays in enabling them to continue to function.

This course aim to:

• Facilitate the examination of the arts ecosystem through interdisciplinary methodologies, emphasizing the political and cultural aspects of communication and media studies.
• Assess critically the multiple ways that media infrastructure can be re-imagined in new, sustainable, and creative ways.
• Equip students with contemporary methodologies for media and communication through disciplinary methodologies including literature, architecture, sociology, and human geography.
• Encourage students in the exploration of the relationship between communication, art, and infrastructure.
• Engage students with real-world experience translating theoretical knowledge into work experience through industry and third sector workshops.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Communicate effective strategies for supporting arts and media organizations.
• Distinguish different methodological approaches to infrastructure drawn from media studies and communication.
• Construct an individual research exercise based on a need of a partner organization.
• Evaluate critical accounts of arts communication with respect to wider socio-cultural and historical concerns.

How do we communicate health, illness and disease? This course covers health communications in a variety of scales, locations, and contexts, extending from the clinical encounter, to public health communications, to the cultural authority of the medical professional. It brings to this topic the distinctive approaches and interests of humanities disciplines, offering a perspective complementary to that of health sociology.

This course introduces students to humanities perspectives upon health communication. Students will have the opportunity to encounter a range of approaches to health communication, broadly conceived to extend from the small scale of the clinical encounter to larger public and cultural statements on health, disease, and illness. Methods examined on the course may include corpus linguistics, conversation analysis, hermeneutics, discourse analysis, narrative medicine, and book and publishing history. Students will have the opportunity to situate specific topics and methods within wider socio-cultural and historical concerns, and within frameworks of ethical and responsible research.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Distinguish different methodological approaches to topics within health communication.
• Formulate a reflective analysis of ethical and responsible research within a specific area of health communication.
• Evaluate critical accounts of health communication with respect to wider socio-cultural and historical concerns.
• Critically analyse and evaluate strategies of health communication with respect to a defined research topic.
• Communicate responses to the material studied on the course both orally and in written form through coherent and sustained argument.
• Work as an autonomous group to organise a lecture from a local expert on a student-led topic in health communication.

This course examines constructed languages, their literary applications, transnational networks, the media through which they flourish, and relation to AI. It explores the history of constructed languages past and present, from Volapük and Esperanto to the languages of Tolkien to language generator platforms such a Vlgarland, and discusses the relation of these languages to global communication, cosmopolitanism, Eurocentrism, and nationalistic agendas. Students will have the opportunity to experiment with the challenges and opportunities of invented languages in the age of AI. Assessment will include a podcast and creative exercise.

This course aim to:

• Introduce the history and ideology of constructed languages from the nineteenth century to the present day, and their relation to IA.
• Identify the means of communication through which these languages circulated in the past and today.
• Enable critical reflection on how constructed languages serve practical and ideological agendas.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Understand the way in which constructed languages challenge assumptions about language and global communication.
• Analyse how constructed languages work in relation to readership, transnational networks, communication media, and AI.
• Engage creatively with digital platforms to create a constructed language and write a piece of short fiction in it; reflect critically on their attempt in relation to the concepts studied in the course.

This course introduces students to specific case studies involving religious participation in societal and political challenges and the impact of religion on local and international levels. Students will focus on four or five case studies presented by experts in the field and apply relevant theoretical and methodological approaches to inform their analyses. Case studies may include: inter-/intra-faith organisational forms, religious ideologies, conflicts and wars, displacement and migration of religious minority groups, religiously motivated racism and hate crimes, freedom of speech versus religious offenses, human rights violations by religious institutions or regimes, public health and scientific advice in faith communities, and religious responses to environmental crises.

This course aim to:

• Examine local and global case studies in relation to religion and its role in politics and international affairs.
• Employ religious studies perspectives to analyse specific case studies of global challenges.
• Interrogate documentary and other types of evidence (e.g. literature, newspaper reports, films) in order to study examples of religious influences in their specific socio-political contexts.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Analyse the role of religion in politics and international affairs using specific examples in their historical and geo-political contexts.
• Apply theoretical and analytical religious studies and interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary global and regional issues (e.g. violent conflict, economic crisis, public health, sustainability, migration, etc).
• Communicate research findings effectively, applying advanced transferable skills involving cultural and religious awareness in both local and international contexts.

This project aims to provide:

• an opportunity to conceive, develop and execute a piece of independent research in the field of communications
• a research focus for students to test ideas and arguments of the academic and professional communities and develop their own arguments and insights
• a framework to put their project into the wider context of their professional field

By the completion of the project students will be able to:

• identify scholarship relating to their chosen topic
• situate their research in wider context of Communication studies
• compile and critically analyse relevant evidence
• display relevant, detailed and informed knowledge of the chosen topic