Digital Media and Society

Digital media now shapes how most people get their news, form opinions, build relationships, and understand the world around them. Digital Media and Society takes that pervasive reality seriously as an object of academic study, asking not just how digital platforms work technically but what they do to social life: how they alter public discourse, reinforce or challenge inequalities, create new forms of community and identity, and generate new sites of power and resistance.

At Sheffield this degree approaches digital media from a social science perspective, which means you will develop both the theoretical frameworks to analyse the relationship between technology and society and the practical research methods to investigate it empirically. You will study platforms, algorithms, data, journalism, political communication, digital culture, and the ethics and regulation of media organisations, always asking how the digital shapes the social and vice versa. A distinctive feature of the programme is that you will also learn to make digital media products, developing practical production skills alongside critical analysis, so that you graduate as someone who can both understand and create in this space.

The three-year full-time programme includes a sandwich placement year and a year abroad, giving you professional experience in a media, research, or technology organisation and an international perspective on digital culture.

Graduates move into roles in journalism, digital communications, social media management, public policy, research, technology companies, NGOs, and the cultural sector. The combination of critical social science thinking and practical digital skills is distinctive and valued in a media industry that increasingly needs people who can navigate both dimensions. Postgraduate study in digital media, sociology, communications, or journalism is also a common path.