Promotional Culture (805P4)

30 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Spring teaching

On this module, you’ll explore promotional culture and communication in contemporary global societies. 

The promotional culture you’ll study includes:

• advertising
• branding
• marketing
• a critical examination of their political and societal impact. 

You’ll examine promotional communication in terms of:

• how advertising language and logic cross over into domains beyond the commercial 
• how brand culture seems to increasingly take over different aspects of life
• how this impacts everyday life and broader processes of social change.

You’ll develop an understanding of the politics and power dynamics of promotional culture and communication.

You'll explore different areas where advertising, branding and marketing mediate individuals, institutions and spaces but also where they cause economic and environmental injustice, in order to:

• appreciate key dynamics in the relationship between promotional culture and social change
• appraise main actors and actions in a global terrain
• grasp key institutional and individual dynamics of communications technologies
• develop a specialised understanding of how various agents (individuals, states, for-profit and non-profit organisations) use media.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 300 hours of work. This breaks down into about 22 hours of contact time and about 278 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2026/27. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.