Communication and Media PhD / MPhil

Overview

The department prides in its ability to embrace the study of communication and media in an inclusive and comprehensive manner. From political communication to discourse and culture, from heritage industries to media and entertainment, from film and television to social media, the Department of Communication and Media has been providing cutting edge research that links strongly with most key areas of inquiry in this major field of studies.

Research in Department of Communication and Media, University of Liverpool, is conducted within four research clusters which share common interest in critical, interdisciplinary analysis of a variety of modes of mediated communication across social spaces and fields.

The Culture, Space and Memory research group brings together ideas and intellectual orientations on the cultures, practices and spatial dispositions that inform transdisciplinary approaches to media and communication in the digital age.

The Discourse, Data and Society research group looks at how language and discourse – in traditional/social media, politics and the wider public domain – act as vehicles of social change as well as carriers of relationships of power and inequality in contemporary societies.

The Media, Politics and Society research cluster deals with critical analysis of media outputs and journalism from the perspectives that highlight political agendas, assess the impacts on marginalised groups, and foster understandings of human rights.

Finally, the Screen & Film Studies research cluster focuses on film and television studies, with the study of digital screens that cut across various media sectors emerging as a third key area of expertise.

The University of Liverpool's Digital Media & Society Institute (DMSI) brings together researchers from a range of disciplines to explore the role and impact of digital media in society today."

We particularly welcome research proposals that match those of our researchers, including:

• Media in humanitarian crises; media and human rights; media coverage of migration and free movement across Europe; 
• Latin American culture and the relationship between politics and aesthetics; contemporary photography;
• Rhetoric, policy frameworks and methodologies that capture the impact and legacy of large-scale urban interventions and events 
• Broadcasting history, institutions and their programming; film and television documentary, television current affairs programming
• Science fiction, fantasy and 'cult' TV and film; PR and promotional cultures with a particular interest in social media; 
• Gender, political communication and news media and the ways in which they intersect 
• The moral function of communication; conceptions of home, identity and belonging in communicative capitalism 
• Critical discourse studies of populist political communication; the intersection of politics and the media as key carriers of public imaginaries of social reality 
• Experimental, oppositional, marginal and other alternative filmmaking histories and practices; the work of Andy Warhol and other artist-filmmakers 
• Argumentation Theory, Rhetoric and Discourse Analysis, with emphasis on in the study of argumentation in strategic communication contexts
• Media discourse (especially approaches from a (socio) linguistic perspective) and the uses of dialogue in TV drama 
• Media and the city; urban cultural studies; visual culture, space and place; cultural mapping and spatial humanities; popular culture, heritage and cultural memory
• International and global journalism; young people as media audiences; the Internet’s role in relation to online risks and to enabling democratic deliberations 
• Political communication during election campaigns, particularly online; social media and their use by voters to communicate politically; 
• Stardom/celebrity, Hollywood and transnational cinema, screen performance, cult media, and digital media/Virtual Reality 
• The production of news, documentary and factual content within public service and commercial broadcasting, and within community and citizen journalism.
• Media discourses and representations in relation to gender and sexuality; the role of media in identity and community 
• American independent cinema; Hollywood and global entertainment; cinema and youth cultures; the B Film, exploitation and creativity; Hollywood and Greek cinema
• The social, political and cultural impacts of digital media; digital media and interpersonal interaction; digital inclusion/exclusion; digital research in the social sciences.

Further resources

• How to write a research proposal
• Find a scholarship
• AHRC - NW Consortium DTP