MA Social Media and Digital Marketing
Please note: This page is for 2027 entry. Click here for 2026 entry.
| UCAS code | 1234 |
|---|---|
| Duration | 1 year full time 2 years part time |
| Entry year | 2026 |
| Campus | Streatham Campus |
| Typical offer | We will consider applicants with a 2:2 Honours degree or above (or equivalent). |
|---|---|
Why study MA Social Media and Digital Marketing at Exeter?
For graduates and professionals seeking a critical and applied understanding of digital engagement, this MA integrates social science perspectives with business and industry-focused training to prepare students for leadership in social media strategy, content creation, and digital marketing analytics. As part of the course, you will learn to conceptualise, design, and launch social media campaigns.
- Gain advanced knowledge and skills in digital marketing and social media management
- Learn how social media and digital platforms are used in contemporary business settings to drive sales and promotional activity, with a focus on precision tracking of interactions, content creation, conceptualising and streamlining e-commerce activities, and critically engaging with techniques such as SEO
- Studying an MA will give you more of a focus on the humanities-based / 'human' and social sciences elements of social media and digital marketing, and user experience. It will give you a greater understanding of how people engage with social media, and how these interactions shape their everyday lives and their behaviour online. You'll also learn how to apply this knowledge to the various areas of social media and digital marketing
- Our vibrant postgraduate community benefits from research-inspired teaching from experts in social media and related subdisciplines, including gamification and critical video game theory, celebrity cultures, promotional cultures, algorithm bias, and user data analysis
- Our MA is industry-focused, and you will graduate uniquely equipped for employment in social media and marketing positions across a range of industries
Top 10 in the UK for Communication and Media Studies
Home to the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum
The biggest film-related archive in the UK outside the British Film Institute
Develop transferable skills and specialist knowledge through interdisciplinary teaching
Varied graduate careers
Entry requirements
We will consider applicants with a 2:2 Honours degree or above (or equivalent). We welcome students from any academic background.
Please also see our guidance on essential documentation required for an initial decision on taught programme applications.
Entry requirements for international students
English language requirements
International students need to show they have the required level of English language to study this course.
The required IELTS test scores for this course fall under Profile B1.
Please visit our English language requirements page to view the required test scores and equivalencies from your country.
Two of my favourite modules are Social Media: Management and Strategy and Promotional Cultures in Consumer Society. What I appreciate most is that we get to choose the brands, industries, or even specific campaigns we want to explore, making the learning process feel very personal and relevant.
What makes learning about these topics even more exciting is that I get to experiment, reflect, and refine my ideas using the frameworks we’ve been taught in class. It feels like a real test drive for the future. The modules' approach has helped me learn how to think strategically, adapt creatively, and anticipate challenges. We’re encouraged to think critically, spot gaps, and come up with better solutions. The mindset will stay with me long after I graduate, when I know I will have to be practical and use these skills in a real-world market.
Duong
MA Social Media and Digital Marketing
Course content
The MA Social Media and Digital Marketing is industry-focused and centred around e-commerce initiatives.
You will learn how organisations in the public, commercial, and third sectors use social media and digital platforms to brand themselves and use promotional activities to drive up sales and other forms of user and customer engagement. Focusing on precision tracking of interactions, writing and crafting of promotional materials, conceptualising and streamlining e-commerce activities, and critically engaging with techniques such as search engine optimisation (SEO). You will engage in specialist content creation and other relevant practical skills used in industry.
Choose from a range of critical, theoretical, entrepreneurial, and practical modules, taught from a range of pedagogical perspectives, with employability at its core. Compulsory modules in Communications will give you a solid grounding in social media, management and strategy and optional modules are available within Communications, Drama, and Marketing (based in the Business School).
The modules below provide examples of what you can expect to learn on this degree course based on recent academic teaching. The precise modules available to you in future years may vary depending on staff availability and research interests, new topics of study, timetabling and student demand.
Please note that the module information displayed here is subject to change.
Overall you must take 120 credits compulsory modules and 60 credits optional modules
Optional Modules
As part of your optional choice you must take a maximum of 30 credits of Business School optional modules
Compulsory modules
| Code | Module | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Compulsory 1 | ||
| Dissertation - Written | 60 | |
| Media and Communications: Advanced Theory and Concepts | 30 | |
| Social Media: Management and Strategy | 30 | |
CDFM001: Dissertation - Written
The dissertation project is the culmination of your postgraduate course and represents an opportunity to explore a research question in detail over an extended period of time. Across the module you will conceive, plan, research and write a study of 15,000 words. Initially you will be supported by a supervisor, but during the writing period you will be expected to work independently.
The dissertation will enable you to consolidate and develop your subject knowledge and methodological skills in your discipline by exploring in detail a topic of your own devising.
You will be supported through the early stages of planning your dissertation in the second term of your studies through a series of workshops. This will enable you to develop and submit a dissertation proposal by the end of term 2 (for part time students the proposal will be submitted by the second term of the second year of study).
You will then be assigned a supervisor who will support you during term 3 as you conduct initial research, prepare draft work and establish your project sufficiently to enable you to work independently after the end of term 3. Your supervisor will support you as your research, planning and writing progress through one-to-one supervision sessions. These combined activities will offer you the necessary guidance and support to refine your initial plans and bring your research project to completion.
CMMM001: Media and Communications: Advanced Theory and Concepts
This module explores current theoretical and conceptual frameworks that are shaping the field of media and communication studies. We will explore a range of theories that can be used to analyse the role that media texts and technologies play in our lives. The module will combine new ways of understanding media, whilst providing you with analytical skills and knowledge that will help you to conduct your dissertation research.
This module aims to:
- Explore the historical development of a range of communication theories.
- Encourage you to consider the potentials, limitations, and critiques of different forms of communications theory and situate these debates in their socio-historical contexts.
- Motivate you to critically analyse media genres, styles, and forms and understand them in relation to their production, consumption, dissemination, and engagement practices.
- Provide you with an advanced understanding of communications as a discipline and the various research-based approaches the discipline can offer.
- Help you begin the process of identifying a suitable idea that can be developed into a research topic for the final dissertation.
CMMM002: Social Media: Management and Strategy
This module explores topics of social media management and social media strategy from a critical and practical perspective. Topics covered may include issues of marketing foundations and strategies on social media, brand management and reputation management on social media, and disinformation, propaganda and persuasion in the age of social media. It may also consider practices in different socio-cultural contexts and a range of social media.
The module aims to:
- Provide you with core knowledge and key skills to critically assess developments in the field of social media management and strategy.
- Offer key industry insights and empirical evidence and studies to help you build these skills.
- Provide you with advanced knowledge of management, as well as strategic communication.
Optional modules
| Code | Module | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Business School Optional Modules | ||
| Experimental and Behavioural Economics | 15 | |
| Managing Competitive Strategy | 15 | |
| Marketing and New Product Innovation | 15 | |
| Leadership and Global Challenges | 15 | |
| Marketing Analysis and Research | 15 | |
| HR Skills and Behaviours | 30 | |
| Brand Design | 15 | |
| Digital Transformation | 15 | |
| Applied Digital Marketing Analytics | 15 | |
| Service Design and Innovation | 15 | |
| Consumer Behaviour in Contemporary Markets | 15 | |
| Optional 1 | ||
| Industry Insights | 30 | |
| Digital Media Cultures | 30 | |
| Strategic Communications | 30 | |
| Public Relations and Promotional Media | 30 | |
| Ideas Generation and the Creative Process | 30 | |
| Creative Management | 30 | |
| Creative Industries | 30 | |
| Transmedia Adaptations | 30 | |
| Archival Encounters: Material Film Histories | 30 | |
| Stars, Stardom and Celebrity From the Classical Era to the Contemporary | 30 | |
BEEM125: Experimental and Behavioural Economics
Summary:
"Taking a course in experimental economics is a little like going to dinner at a cannibal's house. Sometimes you will be a diner, sometimes a part of dinner, sometimes both." (From Experiments with Economic Principles by Bergstrom and Miller ).
Why do people give to charity? Why do people who buy insurance? Why do we like to conform to the behaviour of the majority? We will explore these questions and more in this course. We will pitch the model of rational choice against theories of behavioural economics, and in the process acquire the toolkit for the modern behavioural economist. The lectures and tutorials will go hand in hand. Attendance (especially in the tutorials) is critical for you to understand the content of this module. In the tutorials you will participate in experiments and learn first hand how behaviour might differ from theoretical predictions. Behavioural nudge theory will be critically evaluated.
Additional Information:
Internationalisation
Microeconomics is relevant across countries as it is based on systematic behavioural deviations across societies and mathematical models.
Sustainability
All of the resources for this module are available on the ELE (Exeter learning Environment).
Employability
BEMM068: Managing Competitive Strategy
In this module you will explore strategy and strategic management from a range of different perspectives. In the current business climate there are many significant issues which organisations and their leaders must navigate successfully to survive and prosper. You will have the opportunity to discuss these sources of dynamism and disorder and to think about how strategy has changed over time with many competing theories and schools of practice emerging to provide solutions to the wicked problems facing strategists. If you aspire to a senior management role, to run your own enterprise, or to work in consultancy, this module will help to prepare you to think strategically and to be able to appreciate the long-term view necessary to set the direction for and successfully lead an organisation in the 21st century.
The module focuses on case method for a majority of the time - so you will be working on a variety of case studies applying theory to real world organisations, diagnosing their problems and discussing the actual decisions facing senior managers in those companies as they search for the best solutions. The skills you gain from this are highly valued by employers and provide a good preparation for some styles of interviews and assessment centres used to recruit graduates.
This module is AI integrated, which means there is an expectation that you will use AI during classes and as part of the assessment process
The aims of this module are to
BEMM069: Marketing and New Product Innovation
Marketing is the term given to those activities that occur where an organisation and its customers come into contact and result in a mutually beneficial and satisfying exchange relationship. It is the driving force behind modern business and is concerned with ensuring the closest possible fit between what an organisation does and what its customers need and want. This involves offering the 'right' marketing mix.
However, marketing also depends on the constant updating of ideas and development of new products and services. Consumers can be fickle and change their needs and wants, competitors alter their strategies, and forces within the marketplace regularly change. These factors require organisations to implement New Product Development (NPD) programmes, with a view to integrate and coordinate their marketing efforts through strategic decision-making, reflected in the production of marketing plans.
The module will provide students with the relevant skills and techniques necessary for implementing marketing strategy and planning around the framework of developing a new product/service development programme. Working in project teams, students will develop their project management, communication and team-working skills during the development of a formal presentation of their marketing plan. Students will be asked to reflect on the reasons for new product/service development and how businesses develop a product into a commercial idea.
BEMM071: Leadership and Global Challenges
The aim of this module is to provide you with an opportunity to actively and critically engage in debates about the role of leadership in major global challenges facing the world today. In doing so, the module looks to challenge your implicit conceptions of leadership and to develop a more sophisticated understanding of real-world leadership and its challenges. Each topic will be explored in depth through engagement with academic literature theory and research, as well as practical case-study perspectives and real-world examples. Particular attention will be given to how each topic plays out at the interaction of leaders, organisations, and society.
- Destructive leadership
- Inclusive leadership
- Responsible leadership
This module equips you with the ability to apply critical thinking and understand how different types of leadership contribute to the problems and solutions to the world's greatest challenges. This ability to ask critical questions is an essential higher order thinking skill that will underpin all future management practice.
BEMM115: Marketing Analysis and Research
This module aims to provide you with knowledge on the qualitative and quantitative methodologies used in market research, which provides a foundation to understand markets and consumers. A variety of qualitative and quantitative data collection and data analysis methods for descriptive, causal, and exploratory research designs will be discussed and compared, alongside the utilisation of these techniques in market research. The research design process (problem identification, proposal writing) will also be taught.
Additional Information:
- Internationalisation
- This is a research methodology course which covers quantitative and qualitative research which is relevant across countries. You will be taught methodologies like interviews, experiments, and quantitative research and how these methods are used in countries with different cultures.
- All of the resources for this module are available on the ELE (Exeter Learning Environment).
- Employability
- You will develop skills that will help you perform data collection for organisations and will equip you to work for market research organisations using the methodologies taught in this module.
- The aim of this module is to provide knowledge of research methodologies used in market research, which provides a foundation for understanding consumers and marketplace behaviours. In addition to methodological approaches; an emphasis will be placed upon the research design process (problem identification, research question development, proposal writing), as well as the ethical aspects of market research.
BEMM125DA: HR Skills and Behaviours
This practically orientated module is aimed at helping you develop the core and applied skills needed to enhance your career in HRM. The module aims to help you develop your self-awareness, reflective practice, active listening, questioning and communication skills and personal effectiveness, and improve your business acumen as you develop your HR career. You will have the opportunity to practice some of the key skills and behaviours needed by effective HRM practitioners such as coaching and mentoring, ethical role modelling, employee and stakeholder engagement, and professional courage. You will also develop a clearer understanding of the professional values that underpin effective HRM, and ways of handling the main challenges that HR professionals face.
This module offers a series of advanced activities to equip you with the knowledge, skills and resources to further your career in HRM. Through a combination of practical, reflective, and interactive exercises, this module aims to provide a learning environment where you can explore the fundamental skills and behaviours required by HRM professionals. Through these activities you will be well equipped to evaluate the best course of action for your intended outcome. You will also develop the skills to support, develop you and establish effective HR principles and practices that drive employee engagement.
Skill Acquisition
BEMM128: Brand Design
Brands have increasingly become a focus of marketing activity with some arguing that marketers no longer make products - rather they create brands. This module will give the critical evaluation of the creation and development of brands and their management process from different disciplinary perspectives. Theoretical insights from these perspectives will be used to create or assess current brand strategy and the role of marketing tools in effectively delivering this strategy.
Students will learn different approaches, theories, and concepts for creating and managing brands, managing brand portfolios and provides insights on drivers of successful brand strategies. This module will show the importance of brands in business, consumers' daily lives and the society at large.
Internationalisation
Branding has a global perspective and there are implications in creating, developing, and marketing of a brand on a global scale or in different countries. This module provides an extensive range of brand identity building, brand strategy and brand repositioning examples on local markets and on a global scale, providing frameworks for understanding the brand management process. This module draws extensively on international branding examples and encourages you to examine brands from your home countries in your assignments.
Employability
BEMM190: Digital Transformation
This module will introduce you to the fundamentals of digital transformation through study of a range of practical examples. Organisations must position themselves for success in the digital era to be sustainable. For new ventures, it means creating structures and working practices appropriate to the dynamic environment. For established organisations, it means transforming existing structures and ways of working to meet current and future needs while continuing to meet the expectations of existing clients, employees and other stakeholders. Consequently, digital transformation activities are becoming increasingly strategic across public, private and third sectors.
You will also assess the implications for career development within these disruptive environments. This means building the digital skills required for success such as effective workplace communications across hybrid locations, the use of collaborative online tools, and the importance of ethical behaviour and wellbeing.
This module will help you to:
BEMM778: Applied Digital Marketing Analytics
Module Description
Summary:
This module introduces students to the principles and practical application of digital marketing analytics, focusing on how data can be transformed into meaningful insights that support marketing strategy and decision-making. Students will explore the key tools, platforms and techniques used by businesses to measure and evaluate digital performance across multiple channels.
The module develops an applied understanding of how marketing data is interpreted and used in real business contexts. You will work with datasets from core digital environments, including web analytics platforms, social media analytics, email marketing, search, and paid media campaigns, and learn to interpret performance metrics and critically assess their implications for marketing outcomes.
A key focus of the module is the development of analytical thinking and insight-driven storytelling. You will learn not only how to report metrics, but how to question data quality, identify patterns, diagnose marketing problems, and generate recommendations supported by evidence. The module also highlights the importance of understanding customer behaviour through customer journey analytics, audience analytics, and sentiment and trend analysis, enabling you to link digital performance indicators to decision-making processes.
BEMM786: Service Design and Innovation
This module offers an interdisciplinary and applied introduction to service innovation, with a strong focus on how organisations can design, analyse, and improve services to enhance customer experience and remain competitive. It is particularly relevant if you are interested in the practical challenges of creating value in today’s service economy and in using digital techniques and technologies to inform service innovation.
Building on core ideas from operations management and marketing, the module introduces you to the concept of the service delivery system and explores how customer experience shapes service design, delivery, and evaluation. You will develop technical and consultancy skills that will equip you for the workplace, using real-world data and service improvement examples throughout the module.
The module is research-led and draws on insights from the VISTA AR project, a €7.8m ERDF-funded project focused on digital innovation in cultural heritage sites. This gives you the opportunity to engage with contemporary service challenges and examples of innovation in practice.
There is a strong applied focus throughout, with lectures and practical workshops introducing tools for customer experience analysis and advanced approaches such as eye-tracking and natural language processing. As part of the assessment, you will analyse real-world service examples and make recommendations for improvement and innovation.
BEMM869: Consumer Behaviour in Contemporary Markets
This module critically explores contemporary consumer behaviour by integrating psychological, sociocultural, and digital perspectives to understand how consumers think, feel, interact, and behave in modern marketplaces. Drawing upon concepts from marketing, psychology, sociology, and consumer culture theory, the module examines the evolving nature of consumption within increasingly digitalised and interconnected environments.
The module is structured around four interrelated dimensions of consumer behaviour. First, students are introduced to the foundations of consumer behaviour and the changing marketplace context, including cultural influences, consumer culture, and emerging trends in digital consumption. Second, the module investigates consumer cognition, identity, and decision-making processes by examining perception, learning, attitudes, social identity, and age-related subcultures. Third, the module explores contemporary forms of consumer participation through knowledge sharing, online communities, and value co-creation, highlighting the increasingly active role consumers play in shaping brands and marketplace experiences. Finally, the module examines emotional and behavioural marketplace outcomes, including motivation, personality, lifestyle, emotional contagion on social media, and behavioural patterns of buying, using, and disposing.
CMMM014: Industry Insights
This module provides you with an opportunity to develop your employability skills and potential so that you may more effectively prepare for entering the job market. Through a series of industry-facing guest lectures from practicing media and communications sector professionals, you will be guided through possible career paths and learn to identify employers' needs in a changing job market. You will also have the opportunity to network with the guest speakers, further developing your interpersonal communication and networking skills, maximising your employability potential. There are no pre-requisites or co-requisites for this module, and no specialist knowledge, skills, or experience are necessary to take it. This module is recommended for interdisciplinary pathways.
This module aims to:
- Prepare you to join the workforce by developing your employability and career prospects.
- Provide you with the opportunity to reflect on your career goals and plan for your future career.
- Offer you a range of industry perspectives from guest speakers from the media and communications sector.
- Equip you with a working understanding of the day-to-day realities of different media and communications jobs via industry speakers.
- Provide you with opportunities to engage with the University's Career Zone and familiarise yourself with the services and support they can offer.
- Enable you to deepen your understanding of the media and communications sector and organisations relevant to your own potential career trajectory.
CMMM015: Digital Media Cultures
This module on digital media culture examines a wide variety of perspectives and discourses on digital media from dimensions like (but not limited to) access, capabilities, economy, gender, power, class, and social hierarchies. This module will weave in a range of global trends and perspectives of digital media allowing you as a student of media studies to think of digital media services, software, and platforms as both individually designed experiences and also globally navigated systems. The module will offer you new ways to think about the cultural significance of digital media and the online lives we lead.
This module aims to:
1. Explore the cultural value and significance of digital media and online services and to think of online lives as sites of cultural production.
2. Encourage you to consider the potentials and limitations of different digital media theories and forms in their socio-historical contexts.
3. Motivate you to critically analyse digital media technologies, services, and processes and understand them in relation to production, consumption, dissemination, and engagement practices.
4. Provide you with an expert understanding of communications as a discipline and the various research-based approaches the discipline can offer.
CMMM016: Strategic Communications
This module explores how communication is designed, coordinated, and deployed to influence attitudes, behaviours, and decision-making across political, corporate, military, and civil society contexts. The module critically examines the theories, practices, and ethical challenges underpinning contemporary strategic communication in a global, digitally mediated environment. You will engage with concepts such as narrative power, audience analysis, messaging coherence, reputation and legitimacy, information operations, and the relationship between communication, strategy, and policy. Drawing on international case studies, the module analyses how organisations align communication objectives with broader strategic goals while navigating misinformation, persuasion, and public trust. Emphasis is placed on critical evaluation, strategic planning, and ethical judgement. You will develop the analytical and practical skills required to design, assess, and critique strategic communication campaigns in complex and contested communication environments.
CMMM018: Public Relations and Promotional Media
This module critically examines the strategic role of public relations and promotional media within contemporary organisations and cultural industries, across international contexts, including the UK, US, Europe, and China. The module considers key histories and theories of PR, providing you with a grounding in critical PR studies. Drawing upon a range of advertising, branding, PR, and marketing strategies you will examine numerous campaign case studies to understand how organisations use media relations, social media, and influencer partnerships to shape public perception and achieve strategic objectives. Attention is given to ethical, legal, and cultural issues including misinformation, diversity, sustainability, and responsible communication practice. By the end of the module, you will have an advanced understanding of major debates in the study of public relations, promotional media, and consumer activism across sectors and international contexts.
DRAM141: Ideas Generation and the Creative Process
Working at the intersection of theory and practice, you will explore creativity not as a neat sequence of steps, but as a dynamic, non-linear process shaped by intuition, constraint, environment, and collaboration. Drawing on theories of creativity, innovation, and design-led thinking, you will test how ideas are generated, stretched, disrupted, and transformed through doing.
The module places particular emphasis on embodied and performative approaches to thinking. Through improvisation, play, and structured experimentation, you will work with creativity as something that is enacted - something that happens in space, in interaction, and often under pressure. Performativity here is both a lens and a method: a way of understanding how ideas take form, and how they are communicated, negotiated, and brought to life across different cultural contexts.
At the same time, you will situate creative practice within the realities of the creative industries. Ideas do not exist in isolation: they move through systems of production, distribution, and value. You will critically examine how imaginative, non-linear processes can be translated into viable, impactful, and responsible outcomes, and what is gained, and sometimes lost, in that translation.
DRAM142: Creative Management
This module explores the management of creativity and the application of creative approaches to project, team, and creative project development. You will investigate the challenges of working with creative individuals and teams: What motivates and drives creative talent? How can leaders inspire, support, and enable innovation? Conversely, how do organisational practices or managerial behaviours stifle creativity? You will examine the roles of individuals and teams in promoting ideas, developing projects, and generating value.
Through case study analysis, research, and reflective discussion, you will engage with live challenges and debates from the creative industries. You will be encouraged to consider how organisational culture, sectoral differences, digital storytelling, placemaking, and Theory of Change frameworks may influence creative decision-making, processes, collaboration, and outcomes. Examples may draw on creative management case studies, including projects, events, or exhibitions, offering insight into both successes and lessons from failure.Assessment is portfolio-based, allowing you to demonstrate practical and strategic skills. Portfolios may include elements such as creative projects, business strategies, business model canvases (BMCs), or project plans, providing opportunities to apply your understanding in realistic professional contexts.
DRAM169: Creative Industries
This module explores concepts, structures and issues that draw from creative industries narratives and challenges. By looking at the past, present and future of the creative industries, you will form an understanding of how cultural value is created, consumed and evaluated. This module provides you with an overview of the creative industries in a global context and equips you with a rich, critically informed understanding of the sector. Through engaging with organisational challenges, disruptive innovation and strategic change, you will learn how the business of creativity and value capture has resulted in a growing creative economy, and will analyse, reflect and creatively respond to a range of professional, sustainable contemporary contexts.
This module aims:
- To develop critical skills through the analysis of contemporary case studies from a range of creative organisations.
- To interrogate the notion of value as applied to creativity and to creative industries.
- To develop a balanced understanding of generic business content, such as business structures, business models and funding streams.
- To equip you with an understanding of how the creative sector is adapting to digital technology, social media and changing audience behaviour
- To introduce and study the role and impact of social entrepreneurship.
- To equip you with skills to develop and communicate key business concepts and ideas.
EAFM009: Transmedia Adaptations
Adapting stories across media is one of the most established practices across creative industries. This module will introduce you to advanced study of these practices across several disciplines. You will consider the creative, cultural, and commercial decisions of media creators, considering how stories move across forms such as stage, screen, games, print, comics and webtoons as well as franchises incorporating these. It will also develop case studies derived from different disciplines, aiming to foster interdisciplinary expertise in areas that may include, but are not limited to: media and communications, film studies, games studies, comic studies, TV studies, English, and drama. The module will draw on interdisciplinary expertise from tutors and is suitable for individuals wishing to gain interdisciplinary understanding of the ways that transmedia adaption operates as a creative, commercial, or political practice. There are no pre-requisite modules; however, it will be useful if you have relevant educational experience in any part of the humanities, social sciences or creative industries.
EAFM089: Archival Encounters: Material Film Histories
This module explores the relationship between film and the archive. It will guide you through a range of case studies exploring the international histories and contemporary practices of film archiving from the perspective of the researcher, the donor, the archivist and the public user. We consider how and why film and film culture has been preserved through diverse archival practices. The focus will be upon hidden histories and the uncollected/undercollected in film history. The module will enable you to gain a deep understanding of key currents in archival film theory and to apply these to the use of physical and digital archive collections from across the country.
Your study will be grounded in Exeter's own internationally significant film archive the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum. Here you will work hands-on with a range of archival ephemera, interact with film archive curators and develop your skills in archival cataloguing and research. Module assessment will enable you to undertake detailed critical analysis of archival practice and artefacts and build your skills in working with public-facing archival cataloguing and digital curation.
The module aims to do the following:
EAFM910: Stars, Stardom and Celebrity From the Classical Era to the Contemporary
The field of star studies is one of the richest and best-established in screen studies, drawing together film history, archival research, cultural studies, sociology and psychology. More recently, the field of Celebrity Studies has explored the production and consumption of celebrity in the contemporary milieux of digital technology, social media, and convergence culture. This module engages with the range and depth of approaches to the figure of the star historically and in contemporary culture and provides distinct opportunities for investigating new research into celebrity culture and key figures. It addresses questions such as why screen cultures make use of stars to generate audience appeal; what the broader social meanings of a star or celebrity might be; how star systems work differently in different national cinemas. It closely examines how individual stars and celebrities have generated tremendous transnational appeal; how stardom creates aesthetic and material legacies; and the complex inter-relationship between film stars and celebrity culture more broadly conceived. You will have the opportunity to carry out original research on a star in the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum making use of archival materials. You will also have the opportunity to produce a case study of a star or celebrity from any screen cultural context you choose.
The Promotional Cultures module has been especially meaningful for me. It’s helped me reflect critically on the purpose and impact of past projects I have been involved with, and offered a fresh perspective on the marketing industry. The practical approaches introduced in this module are also highly applicable to both academic and professional contexts. [The teaching is] always insightful and filled with human warmth, and I also particularly appreciate the guest lectures by external scholars.
Minghui
MA Social Media and Digital Marketing
Fees
2026/27 entry
UK fees per year:
£12,650 full-time; £6,325 part-time
International fees per year:
£25,550 full-time; £12,775 part-time
Scholarships
The University of Exeter offers a wide range of scholarships to support your education, with £7 million available for international students applying to study with us in the 2026/27 academic year, including our prestigious Exeter Excellence Scholarships. We also provide awards for sport, music and other achievements, as well as regional and partner scholarships with organisations such as Chevening, The Beacon Trust and the British Council. For more information on scholarships and other financial support, please visit our scholarships and bursaries page.
University of Exeter Alumni Scholarship
We are pleased to offer the University of Exeter Alumni Scholarship, a scholarship for University of Exeter alumni beginning a standalone postgraduate programme in 2026/27 with us a scholarship worth 20% of the cost of your first year tuition fees.
Terms and conditions, including deadlines, apply.
Teaching and research
You will receive an internationally-exceptional education, including hands-on experience and training within our unique and world-leading research facilities, such as the Digital Humanities Lab and the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum.
Research-led teaching ensures module content includes the latest trends in Social Media and Digital Marketing. Our research includes: contemporary media and culture, gamification and critical video game theory, celebrity cultures, promotional cultures, algorithm bias, and user data analysis.
You will also benefit from a range of visiting expert speakers from industry, and have opportunities to participate in content creation and industry-facing events.
Outside academics, I’ve also had the chance to get involved with other parts of university life. I was part of the social media committee for my course, and I’ve worked as a language leader for Japanese too. These hands-on experiences, alongside the theoretical knowledge I’ve learned throughout the course, have equipped me for my career progression and built my confidence around working in this field in the future.
After I graduate, I plan to take a PhD degree in cultural studies in Hong Kong, and maybe work in the field of public relations at the same time.
Cherry
MA Social Media and Digital Marketing
Facilities
We are exceptionally lucky to have some fantastic facilities and resources on the Streatham Campus.
Digital Humanities Lab
Digital Humanities is increasingly important in all areas of humanities research, including history, archaeology, literatures and languages. This research space enables the examination, preservation and analysis of historical, literary and visual material. Facilities in the lab include:
- a flagship seminar room equipped with a 4.2-metre video wall, encouraging interactive engagement in a shared display space
- two state-of-the-art photography labs, including provision for the 2D digitisation of heritage material and primary sources
- an audio-visual lab with a recording studio and sound editing suite
- a MakerSpace equipped with 3D scanning and printing equipment
The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum
The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum holds a wide-ranging collection of more than 70,000 film related artefacts and is the largest research archive in any British University.
The collection is available for all students to use as a research and study resource, giving students a highly distinctive and valuable experience of studying and researching film using primary materials, documents and artefacts. State-of-the-art equipment in our Digital Humanities Lab enables the examination and analysis of these materials.
Meet the Programme Director
I am a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Promotional Media (E&R). I am also the Admission Tutor for Communications. Before the appointment at Exeter, I taught at the University of Greenwich, Cardiff University, and King's College London. I taught a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate subjects in the fields of advertising, media and communication and digital humanities.
Before entering academia, I worked for Country Garden Real Estate in China as a Senior Brand Manager; as a Journalist for Chinese Southern Daily in Foshan, and UK Chinese Journal in London; and as a Research Associate for China Current Network. I am the vice-president of the UK-China Media and Cultural Studies Association (UCMeCSA), and also a member of IAMCR, ICA, ECREA and MeCCSA.
Dr Zizheng Yu
Programme Director
Careers
This MA provides you with valuable graduate employability skills by developing advanced skills in digital literacy, research methods, critical thinking, strategic planning, the application of abstract theory and concepts into tangible outputs, and the ability to gauge the success of such outputs through data analysis.
These skills can be utilised in a wide range of future careers across, public, private, commercial and third sectors.
Guest speakers will give you a starting point to develop your own broad network of professional contacts.
Key areas in which our graduates could work include:
- Advertising and market research/analytics
- Media or Social media management/strategy/consultancy/content creation/campaigning
- Management consultancy activities
- Media campaigns
- Media policy/education
- Computer programming and consultancy
- Video, television and music production and publishing
- Education
- Charities/NGOs
