Digital Media & Magazine Publishing BA/BSc (Hons)
with or without Professional Practice Year
Course overview
Are you a budding journalist, or keen to get into the publishing business? Our new BA/BSc (Hons) Digital Media & Magazine Publishing degree at UCA Epsom is a unique course that combines the skills you'll need for both areas.
This course covers the practical and technical skills involved in digital and print-based journalism, with a core focus on editing, production and a professional understanding of the business of publishing.
You will gain the knowledge to manage the publishing process from idea generation to publication, employ a range of different writing and visual skills, learn to pitch and commission stories and gain hands-on experience in producing a publication across print and digital media formats. Along the way, you'll be taught by an experienced team of journalists and editors from the publishing world of Music, Fashion and Lifestyle media.
Working alongside students on a range of fashion, music and business courses, you'll develop a deep understanding of the business of digital media, and the role of the journalist within it. You'll also gain important skills in networking, self-promotion, interviewing and communication.
Throughout the course, you'll develop skills through individual and collaborative work in both studio and industry environments, including a work placement (or Professional Practice Year, if you choose that option) and live project briefs, as well as learning from teaching staff with a wealth of knowledge and connections.
Your studies will culminate in the production of a comprehensively researched independent print publication with a partner website or digital platform.
By graduation, you’ll be fully equipped to enter the publishing industry, with the skills, knowledge, confidence and portfolio of varied work that you need to take you onwards.
This programme has previously been titled BA (Hons) Magazine Journalism & Publishing.
| Length of study | 3 years full-time Or, 4 years full-time with Professional Practice Year |
|---|---|
| Campus | Epsom |
| Entry requirements | 112 UCAS tariff points |
| Course entry options | Sept 2021, Sept 2022 |
| UCAS institution code | C93 |
| UCAS code | WP25 |
| UCAS code for course with Professional Practice | WP26 |
Course details
Year 1 students will be inducted into the UCA Business School unique ‘ecosystem’, one that blends ‘core’ studies of economics and cultural theory with the ‘specialist’ units and ‘electives’.
Business Bootcamp 1: Design Thinking & Orientation
This unit is designed to introduce you to the Business School for the Creative Industries highly effective learning community and professional global network orientation as you explore design thinking.
Media: Theories & Histories
This unit will situate media in broader economic and political practices. These impact how audiences & consumers value and engage with creative outputs in the public sphere.
Magazine Publishing: Context and Development
This unit will explore this rich industrial and cultural legacy of magazine publishing. The unit also aims to develop a contemporary and futures look at the ‘challenges’ that publishers face in the digital era of ubiquitous content, democratised and social media.
Economics for the Creative Industries
This unit is designed to equip you with the toolkit and give you the practice in applying this toolkit so that you can discover just how useful economics really is. At the outset, the unit will introduce you to the central issues of scarcity and choice, and the extent of government involvement in decision-making. The unit outlines economic reasoning and discusses how our understanding is advanced by the interaction between theories and practical application with particular context of the creative industries.
Business Seminar 1 – Understanding Consumers
This unit explores what happens before, during, and after the point when someone buys something. It investigates how having (or not having) certain products affects our lives; specifically, how these items influence how we feel about ourselves and each other, especially with the influence of social media and the digital consumption.
Business Bootcamp 2: Research and Development
The Bootcamp is an orientation unit for all students commencing Business School programmes and is designed to build a highly effective learning community.
Magazine Content
This unit aims to embrace the creative and commercial ‘mix’ of magazine content, and helps you understand and learn the skills and craft of magazine journalism, content creation and ‘content marketing’ (or ‘branded content’), a side of contemporary magazine publishing that is growing rapidly to fill the void of falling advertisement revenues seen in consumer magazine publishing in the last few years.
Understanding Trends & Forecasting
Through this unit, you will explore the concepts, theories and practices of trend forecasting within the context of the creative industries. You will examine the role of the futurologist whose task it is to research, define and develop a forecast of the future and map the structure of ongoing trends, and the direction society is moving with the emphasis on product and experience trends.
Cosmetics & Beauty: Business & Practices (elective unit)
This unit introduces you to the fundamental principles of the cosmetic & beauty business & practices through a global lens. You will identify with how the macro environment affects the cosmetic & beauty industry sector and consumer groups and how it operates, introducing you the various market levels and sectors.
Fashion: Business & Practices (elective unit)
This unit introduces you to the fundamental principles of fashion business & practices through a global lens. You will identify with how the macro environment affects the fashion industry sector and consumer groups and how it operates, introducing you the various market levels and sectors.
Games: Business & Practices (elective unit)
This unit introduces you to the fundamental principles of the games business & practices through a global lens. You will identify with how the macro environment affects the games industry sector and consumer groups and how it operates, introducing you the various market levels and sectors.
Lifestyle Products: Business & Practices (elective unit)
This unit introduces you to the fundamental principles of lifestyle products business & practices through a global lens. You will identify with how the macro environment affects the lifestyle products industry sector and consumer groups and how it operates, introducing you the various market levels and sectors.
Music: Business & Practices (elective unit)
This unit introduces you to the fundamental principles of music business & practices through a global lens. You will identify with how the macro environment affects the music industry sectors and consumer groups and how it operates, introducing you the various market levels and sectors.
Business Seminar 2 – Business Analytics
This unit provides general knowledge about business analytics, illustrated with case studies and examples from various creative industries. In order to use the above-mentioned methods and models effectively, an understanding of underlying probability theory and statistics is needed.
Year 2 provides the knowledge and tools to build-on students’ foundation studies by following ‘core’ business school units (around financial management and critical analysis), while also experimenting with ‘elective’ units grounded in a number of important subjects that magazines are inextricably linked with, namely: public relations, digital marketing.
Business Bootcamp 3: Storytelling and Narrative
This bootcamp provides you with an opportunity to explore narrative structures and experiment how they have been used, particularly in the changing landscape of digital marketing, demonstrating how important it is to develop your storytelling skills in the creative industries.
Financial Management
In this unit you will explore business, financial and management models relating to the creative economy with focus sessions on the nuances of Fashion, Music and Digital revenue streams.
Influence & Influencers (elective unit)
This unit aims to holistically approach the subject of influence and influencer-led marketing, looking to the practical, critical and theoretical contexts surrounding this subject. We’ll begin by outlining the contexts surrounding influence – including the history of the influencer, and its contemporary applications within fashion, music and advertising.
Digital Marketing Analytics (elective unit)
Digital marketing analytics seeks to understand markets in order to improve marketing actions. The ability to acquire, analyse and to understand large marketing data sets, made possible by digitisation, can improve marketing campaigns and result in better performance. Data sets can be mined using a variety of quantitative techniques. Understanding markets better will enable more effective allocation of marketing budgets and an improved understanding of customer experiences.
Public Relations (elective unit)
Great PR resonates in a way that advertising never can. In this unit you will discover the theories, the personalities, and the good, the bad and the ugly of this craft. You will learn how to produce press releases, boiler plates and building compelling stories and how to pitch them.
Gamification & Marketing (elective unit)
This unit approaches the subject of gamification and marketing holistically, investigating the practical, critical and theoretical contexts surrounding this subject. The unit begins by assessing some of the more well-known intersections in this field in the forms of production, distribution, commerce and consumer experience.
Wearable Technology (elective unit)
The unit explores wearable cultures, alongside the macro and micro landscapes and how this is influencing and impacting the creative industries. It investigates how sectors are adopting, or resisting, the technology and where and how it is being used; end product or experience, production, supply chain.
Business Seminar 3: Professional Practice
You will be guided through a series of lectures, workshops and seminars to prepare you for your industry experience; self-diagnosis will be in respect of your interests, strengths, areas for development and your future career ambitions; building and creating your network, how you can make a positive contribution to industry and how you see yourself and others.
Business Bootcamp 4: Exploring Innovation
Through a series of exciting and engaging fast paced workshops, tasks and peer sessions you will be introduced and welcomed to professional practice and conduct in the creative industries through the BSCI Honeycomb Lens where we facilitate self-motivation, exploration, empowerment, and support development and recognition of skills for learning as you experience your business school journey.
Customer Magazine Project
During this unit, you will gain an understanding of many aspects of this exciting subset of magazine publishing. You will learn about the structures and processes involved in publishing customer magazines across a range of platforms and develop a deeper understanding of the workings of a professional magazine publishing industry.
Music, Media & Communications: Print & Audio (elective unit)
This unit explores the connection between music and media. It will uncover the history of music media from the early works of music criticism up to the present-day landscape of multiple digital channels, social media and individual narratives.
Identity & Marketing (elective unit)
This unit will introduce you to how identity and marketing work in tandem. It will look at the symbolism of brand identity and its importance in attracting a loyal customer and the ways marketing utilises data to target segmented consumer groups attracting niche audiences with customised promotions.
Behavioural Studies and Consumption (elective unit)
This unit aims to introduce students to the theory and practice of consumer behaviour and consumption. You will explore how perceptions, learning, memory, personality, and culture influence consumer behaviour and how consumption changes by cultural and subcultural influences.
The Business of Magazines (elective unit)`
This unit aims to examine some of publishing’s business models while attempting to understand the value of established business theories through quantitative and qualitative tools of analysis to develop knowledge, understanding and informed practices in the area. The unit will examine the challenges for large legacy businesses that have consolidated into a smaller number of large multinational corporations, as well as explore entrepreneurship and small business economics and finance of magazine ‘independents’ and start-ups
Professional Placement (for students not on Professional Practice Year pathway)
This unit is self-initiated and will involve you taking a legitimate Industry placement opportunity, regarded by you and your unit leader as an appropriate and unique professional experience.
Creative Innovation (for students on the Professional Practice Year pathway)
This unit is designed for you investigate the real-world, relevant issues that are impacting on your Industry, whilst challenging well-established theory and/or principles which these contemporary issues conflict with.
Industry Lecture Series (for students on the Professional Practice Year pathway)
The series will include industry expert lectures, group workshops and group working, in order to test and explore industry sectors.
You’ll spend two years learning with us, before putting what you’ve learned into practice through a year-long industry placement.
Our Professional Practice placements give you the opportunity to develop your professional, academic and personal potential, equipping you to be confident and engaged in creative workplaces. These qualities are widely recognised by employers and a significant proportion of placement students nationally are offered graduate-level jobs or go onto postgraduate study.
Throughout your placement, your course team will support you, making use of our extensive industry connections to help facilitate you to find about the right placement for you. On conclusion of the placement, you’ll return to complete your final year of study – applying what you’ve learned on the job.
If you opt to complete a professional practice year, this will take place in year three. You will undertake a placement within the creative industries to further develop your skills and CV.
While on the Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee for that year. This fee will be determined using government funding regulations. Based on current regulations, we expect this to be a maximum of 20% of the tuition fee rate that you are charged for your second year of study. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during this year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this as you approach your Professional Practice Year.
Year 3 is a consolidating period at the Business School. The Degree Project (an area from where portfolios will be full of new magazines ideas and research) is supported by elective study focused on creative industry ‘futures’ – dominated by the subject of innovation.
Business Bootcamp 5: Research & Methodologies
This bootcamp provides you with an opportunity to understand how effective research can support your studies and methodology is about how you find the answers to your questions and the methods that you use. We shall discuss the different methods by which you can elicit findings whether quantitative (informing by data) or qualitative (informing from opinions). In most of today’s industries ‘data’ is king.
Innovations in Magazine Publishing
This units examines this contemporary economic and business challenge. It seeks to be a final year ‘futures’ discursive and research-based unit, one that examines challenge, change, new innovations, new business models and the counterintuitive rise in interest in the printed magazine from a new breed of younger and more diverse magazine publishers – the so called ‘independent magazines’.
Cosmetics & Beauty: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
This unit explores the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global cosmetic & beauty industry. You will be analysing influence from culture and society and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations. Your work involves an in-depth study of the current macro environment, using the findings of this study to translate, validate and communicate a vision for the future of your industry.
Fashion: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
This unit explores the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global fashion industry. You will be analysing influence from culture and society and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations.
Games: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
This unit explores the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global games industry. You will be analysing influence from culture and society, and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations.
Lifestyle Goods: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
This unit explores the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global lifestyle goods industry. You will be analysing influence from culture and society, and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations.
Music: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
This unit explores the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global music industry. You will be analysing influence from culture and society, and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations.
Creative Business Start-up (elective unit BA course)
In this unit you will learn the process of creating and building a new business venture. You will explore a range of case studies and identify and evaluate the role of creativity in business start-ups.
Data Mining for Marketers (elective unit BA/BSc course)
Data Mining focuses on the use of automation to uncover relationships within datasets that can be used to support improved decision processes. When employed in marketing, data mining will use customer, potential customer, supplier and population data to reveal patterns in the data that have potential to improve the marketing process and outcomes.
Predictive Analytics for Business (elective unit BA/BSc course)
This unit introduces predictive modelling and explains its application in business decisions. It focusses on a set of statistical techniques including regression modelling, cluster analysis and survival analysis, using predominantly using Excel and R.
Audience Evaluation (elective unit BA/BSc course)
This unit provides an introduction to audience research in the creative industries, aiming to evaluate how audiences play a key role in shaping creative and cultural experiences and marketing activities in contemporary business environments.
Business Seminar 4: Strategy & Decision Making
This unit provides knowledge about strategic Decision Making for Management and will enable you to transform decision making into a smart and insightful process, providing a robust framework of effective and replicable solutions for better decisions and awareness of decision traps, as well as learning how to assess and choose high-value strategic options under the current climate of enormous uncertainty.
Business Bootcamp 6: Developing Enterprise
This unit will provide you with the opportunity to develop your creative thinking skills in a collaborative environment, bringing greater understanding to how those ideas may develop and transform through product or enterprise development.
Degree Project
In this final unit, you will apply all the learning throughout years 1,2 and 3 to create a distinctive piece of work for your degree project. Your final portfolio will implement a series of outcomes that evaluates and analyses the ideation of your concept.
Tuition fees
The course fees per year for 2021 entry are:
- UK students - £9,250
- EU students - £9,250 (see fee discount information)
- International students - £16,950 (standard fee)
- International students - £16,270 (full early payment fee)
If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee for that year. This fee will be determined using government funding regulations. Based on current regulations, we expect this to be a maximum of 20% of the tuition fee rate that you are charged for your second year of study. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during this year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this as you approach your Professional Practice Year.
The course fees for 2022 entry will be available here shortly.
Additional course costs
In addition to the tuition fees please see the additional course costs for 2021 entry. The details for 2022 entry will be available here in due course.
Further information
Find out more about our course fees and any financial support you may be entitled to:
These fees are correct for the stated academic year only. Costs may increase each year during a student’s period of continued registration on course in line with inflation (subject to any maximum regulated tuition fee limit). Any adjustment for continuing students will be at or below the RPI-X forecast rate.
Course specifications
Please note, syllabus content indicated is provided as a guide. The content of the course may be subject to change in line with our Student Terms and Conditions for example, as required by external professional bodies or to improve the quality of the course.
Facilities
Students have access to dedicated studios for personal and group working, a podcast room, and campus photographic studios with lighting rigs, green screen lighting set ups. There are also digital media suites equipped with Macs and PCs, programmed with specialist software such as Adobe Creative Suite, Dreamweaver and After Effects.
Business School studios, UCA Epsom
Business School Studios, UCA Epsom
Library, UCA Epsom
Business School studios, UCA Epsom
Course connections
The course is taught by practising journalists and editors with a wide range of skills and experience working for newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs, broadcast and television, having worked for titles such as:
- Time Out
- Harrods
- Selfridges
- The Independent
- Metro
- The Sunday Times
- The Guardian
- InStyle
- The Daily Express
- The Sunday Express
- Channel 4
- Topman
- Pop Magazine.
Our students also undertake placements with:
- Independent magazines
- PR agencies
- Advertising agencies
- Model agencies
- High street brands
- Designer labels
- Individual stylists
- Creative directors
- Fashion designers.
In addition to this, we invites guest speakers from different levels of industry, across a many different disciplines and backgrounds. Recent speakers have included editors, authors, photographers, stylists, curators and publishers.
Graduate employability from this course is very high, as the transferable skills acquired throughout the course open the doors to a range of different roles within fashion and the wider creative industries. This course doesn’t just produce writers and journalists, but also marketing and PR professionals, and digital and social media content managers. Graduates have also pursued careers in fashion styling and buying. Examples of graduate destinations include:
- Net-a-Porter
- Oasis
- Liberty
- The Tate
- Bloomingdales
- The Financial Times
- The Metro
- John Lewis
- Jigsaw UK
- Harrods
- Grazia
- Glamour
- Harper’s Bazaar
- Men’s Health
- ASOS
- Dazed & Confused
- The Huffington Post.
Your training on this course will prepare you for a wide range of postgraduate courses. We offer postgraduate opportunities in our Business School and we will help you find the correct course for you and support you in your application should further study be for you.
Our Staff
"Studying at UCA has given me so many skills that I used in the production of my magazine, particularly my writing ability which has grown and developed so much over the past three years."
Entry requirements
The standard entry requirements* for this course are:
One of the following:
- 112 new UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
- Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
- Distinction, Merit, Merit at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
- Merit at UAL Extended Diploma
- 112 new UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
- 27-30 total points in the International Baccalaureate Diploma with at least 15 IB points at Higher level, see more information about IB entry requirements.
And four GCSE passes at grade A*-C and/or grade 4-9 including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).
Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply.
*We occasionally make offers which are lower than the standard entry criteria, to students who have faced difficulties that have affected their performance and who were expected to achieve higher results. We consider the strength of our applicants’ portfolios, as well as their grades - in these cases, a strong portfolio is especially important.
To view the equivalent entry requirements for your country please select it in the list below.
Don't meet the international entry requirements or English language requirements?
You may be able to enter the course through the following entry courses:
Pre-sessional English courses in the UK or China
This course doesn’t require a portfolio. If you receive an offer, you’ll be invited to attend an Offer Holder Webinar where you can meet the course team and learn more about the course. We welcome students with a broad range of A-level subjects, as well as students with appropriate Art & Design Foundations or BTEC/UALAB diplomas which allow you to demonstrate your ability to research, evaluate and produce creative solutions.
Apply now
UK applications
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Apply for full-time study - starting September 2021:
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Apply for full-time study - starting September 2022:
International & EU applications
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Apply for full-time study - starting September 2021:
-
Apply for full-time study - starting September 2022:
When to apply:
We are still accepting applications for 2021 entry - get your application in now.
If applying directly to us, you can apply throughout the year but we recommend you apply as early as possible so you have time to arrange accommodation and visas.
For more information visit our how to apply pages
UK Applications
-
Apply for full-time study - starting September 2021:
-
Apply for full-time study - starting September 2022:
International Applications
-
Apply for full-time study - starting September 2021:
-
Apply for full-time study - starting September 2022:
When to apply:
We are still accepting applications for 2021 entry - get your application in now.
If applying directly to us, you can apply throughout the year but we recommend you apply as early as possible so you have time to arrange accommodation and visas.
For more information visit our how to apply pages
Get in touch