About this specialisation

Increasingly, jobs in post-industrial economic arenas are formulated around service and brain work, replacing the manufacturing emphasis of former eras. Within this framework, questions about culture, including cultural production and the importance of our cultural heritage, are assuming ever-greater importance. At the same time, we are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of media and of media interactions in all spheres of public and political life.

This specialisation offers students the opportunity to trace public policy making in a wide range of cultural and media arenas. It will explore questions such as: why the promotion of certain cultural offerings are good for the nation’s civic development, while other cultural forms are deemed ‘simply commercial’; the availability of broadcast licenses in the age of the internet; how we respond to and understand our own histories and cultural present.

Questions of cultural and media policy and policy-making provide a framework for understanding the legal framework, classifications and institutions which underlie culture and promote or prevent an understanding of our cultural heritage and diversity. They also provide a framework for understanding public opinion and freedom of speech within a public sphere impacted by media disruption.