| UCAS code | 1234 |
|---|---|
| Duration | 1 year full time 2 years part time |
| Entry year | September 2025 |
| Campus | Streatham Campus |
| Discipline | Media and Communications |
| Contact |
| Typical offer | 2:2 Honours degree |
|---|---|
Overview
- 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 15 in the UK for Communication and Media Studies
14th in The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2024
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 with 53% or above, or international equivalent, in a relevant subject that includes some coverage of media studies or other theory-focused media-related course, cultural studies, sociology (or a social science course), history, politics, literature, philosophy.
We will also consider applicants with a degree in a non-related subject providing you have at least one year's experience within the fields of media and/or the cultural industries. Additional information may also be requested to consider these 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 test scores for this course fall under Profile B2. Please visit our English language requirements page to view the required test scores and equivalencies from your country.
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 we outline here 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.
90 credits Compulsory modules, 90 credits Optional modules
Compulsory modules
| Code | Module | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| CMMM002 | Social Media: Management and Strategy | 30 |
| CMMM007 | Dissertation | 60 |
Optional modules
Students must take a maximum of 30 credits of Business School option modules; the rest of the optional credit for the programme must come from Communications modules.
a Students must have completed BEMM778 first
| Code | Module | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| BEMM115 | Marketing Analysis and Research | 15 |
| BEMM128 | Brand Design | 15 |
| BEMM778 | Applied Digital Marketing Analytics | 15 |
| BEMM782 | Digital Marketing Planning See note a above | 15 |
| BEMM786 | Service Design and Innovation | 15 |
| CMMM012 | Selling the Self: Influencer Culture and Digital Capitalism | 30 |
| CMMM010 | Promotional Cultures in Consumer Society | 30 |
| CMMM003 | Gaming in Everyday Life: A Global Perspective | 30 |
| CMMM004 | Investigating Media Infrastructure | 30 |
| CMMM005 | Social Media and Migration | 30 |
| CMMM006 | Soft Power and International Communications | 30 |
| EAFM910 | Stars, Stardom and Celebrity From the Classical Era to the Contemporary | 30 |
| EAFM081 | Hearing Film: Film Sound and Music | 30 |
| EAFM009 | Transmedia Adaptations | 30 |
Fees
2025/26 entry
UK fees per year:
£12,500 full-time; £6,250 part-time
International fees per year:
£25,300 full-time; £12,650 part-time
Scholarships
We invest heavily in scholarships for talented prospective Masters students. This includes over £5 million in scholarships for international students, such as our Global Excellence Scholarships*.
For more information on scholarships, please visit our scholarships and bursaries page.
*Selected programmes only. Please see the Terms and Conditions for each scheme for further details.
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.
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
