MA Media and Communication Studies

Where journalism degrees make media, this degree studies it: how platforms shape public conversation, how audiences actually behave, how persuasion works and fails, and what regulation can and cannot do about any of it. The field's strongest departments — Amsterdam's among the best known globally — are quantitative-research powerhouses, and their graduates leave with serious empirical skills.

That research training is the employment story. Media graduates who can design a study, run the analysis and present it clearly are hired into strategy, audience insight and policy roles that pure content skills do not reach.

An analytical rather than vocational master's, open to a range of first degrees.

• A bachelor's degree in any humanities or social science subject; media, communication, sociology and politics are common.
• Evidence of extended academic writing.
• English proficiency at a high level.
• A statement naming what you want to research — platforms, audiences, representation, policy — rather than a general interest in media.
• A portfolio only where the programme has a production element; most do not.

Distinguish carefully between the analytical and the production versions of this degree. One trains you to research media, the other to make it, and the titles rarely make it obvious.

Roles that involve understanding audiences and media systems rather than producing content.

• Media research and audience insight at broadcasters, agencies and platforms.
• Strategy and planning in advertising and media agencies.
• Communications and public affairs, including policy-facing work.
• Digital and social media strategy — the analytical side rather than the posting.
• Media policy and regulation at regulators and non-governmental organisations.
• Doctoral study and academia.

This is not a production qualification. If the goal is to make films, programmes or content, a practice-based course is the better investment — and choosing between them deliberately matters.

One year of theory and research method applied to contemporary media, finishing with a dissertation.

• Media and communication theory — how media influence is understood and argued about.
• Digital platforms and algorithmic culture, the field's current centre of gravity.
• Audience and reception research — how what is made is actually received.
• Media policy and regulation — ownership, platform governance and content rules.
• Research methods — discourse and content analysis, ethnography, and increasingly computational methods.
• A dissertation on a self-defined question.

The computational and analytics methods are the most commercially transferable part. A graduate who can analyse platform data as well as theorise about it has considerably more options.