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Postgraduate Taught

MA Social Media and Digital Marketing

Please note: The below is for 2025 entries. Click here for 2024 entries.
UCAS code 1234
Duration 1 year full time
2 years part time
Entry year September 2025
Campus Streatham Campus
Discipline Media and Communications
Contact
Typical offer

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2:2 Honours degree

Contextual offers

Overview

  • Gain advanced knowledge and skills in digital marketing and social media management 
  • Learn how social media and digital platforms are used in contemporary business settings to drive sales and promotional activity, with a focus on precision tracking of interactions, content creation, conceptualising and streamlining e-commerce activities, and critically engaging with techniques such as SEO 
  • Studying an MA will give you more of a focus on the humanities-based / 'human' and social sciences elements of social media and digital marketing, and user experience. It will give you a greater understanding of how people engage with social media, and how these interactions shape their everyday lives and their behaviour online. You'll also learn how to apply this knowledge to the various areas of social media and digital marketing
  • Our vibrant postgraduate community benefits from research-inspired teaching from experts in social media and related subdisciplines, including gamification and critical video game theory, celebrity cultures, promotional cultures, algorithm bias, and user data analysis 
  • Our MA is industry-focused, and you will graduate uniquely equipped for employment in social media and marketing positions across a range of industries 

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View 2024 Entry

Fast Track (current Exeter students)

Open days and visiting us

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Contact

Programme Director: Dr Zizheng Yu

Web: Enquire online

Phone: +44 (0)1392 72 72 72

Top 10 icon

Top 10 in the UK for Communication and Media Studies

8th in The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2025

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Home to the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum

The biggest film-related archive in the UK outside the British Film Institute

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Develop transferable skills and specialist knowledge through interdisciplinary teaching

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Varied graduate careers

Entry requirements

We will consider applicants with a 2:2 Honours degree with 53% or above, or international equivalent, in a relevant subject that includes some coverage of media studies or other theory-focused media-related course, cultural studies, sociology (or a social science* course - please see list below for details), history, politics, literature, philosophy.

We will also consider applicants with a degree in a non-related subject providing you have at least one year's experience within the fields of media and/or the cultural industries. Additional information may also be requested to consider these applications.

*Accepted social science subjects include:

  • Anthropology
  • Archaeology
  • Area and Development Studies
  • Criminology
  • Demography
  • Development Studies
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Economic and Social History
  • Environmental Planning
  • Human Geography
  • International Relations
  • Law
  • Linguistics
  • Management and Business Studies
  • Media and Communication Studies
  • Philosophy
  • Politics and International Studies
  • Psychology
  • Science and Technology Studies
  • Social Policy
  • Social Work
  • Social Statistics, Methods, and Computing
  • Socio Legal Studies
  • Sociology

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Entry requirements for international students

English language requirements

International students need to show they have the required level of English language to study this course. The required test scores for this course fall under Profile B2. Please visit our English language requirements page to view the required test scores and equivalencies from your country.

Course content

The MA Social Media and Digital Marketing is industry-focused and centred around e-commerce initiatives.  

You will learn how organisations in the public, commercial, and third sectors use social media and digital platforms to brand themselves and use promotional activities to drive up sales and other forms of user and customer engagement. Focusing on precision tracking of interactions, writing and crafting of promotional materials, conceptualising and streamlining e-commerce activities, and critically engaging with techniques such as search engine optimisation (SEO). You will engage in specialist content creation and other relevant practical skills used in industry.   

Choose from a range of critical, theoretical, entrepreneurial, and practical modules, taught from a range of pedagogical perspectives, with employability at its core. Compulsory modules in Communications will give you a solid grounding in social media, management and strategy and optional modules are available within Communications, Drama, and Marketing (based in the Business School). 

The modules we outline here provide examples of what you can expect to learn on this degree course based on recent academic teaching. The precise modules available to you in future years may vary depending on staff availability and research interests, new topics of study, timetabling and student demand.

90 credits Compulsory modules, 90 credits Optional modules

 

Compulsory modules

CodeModule Credits
CMMM002 Social Media: Management and Strategy 30
CMMM007 Dissertation 60

Optional modules

Students must take a maximum of 30 credits of Business School option modules; the rest of the optional credit for the programme must come from Communications modules.

a  Students must have completed BEMM778 first

CodeModule Credits
BEMM115 Marketing Analysis and Research 15
BEMM128 Brand Design 15
BEMM778 Applied Digital Marketing Analytics 15
BEMM782 Digital Marketing Planning See note a above15
BEMM786 Service Design and Innovation 15
CMMM012 Selling the Self: Influencer Culture and Digital Capitalism 30
CMMM010 Promotional Cultures in Consumer Society 30
CMMM003 Gaming in Everyday Life: A Global Perspective 30
CMMM004 Investigating Media Infrastructure 30
CMMM005 Social Media and Migration 30
CMMM006 Soft Power and International Communications 30
EAFM910 Stars, Stardom and Celebrity From the Classical Era to the Contemporary 30
EAFM081 Hearing Film: Film Sound and Music 30
EAFM009 Transmedia Adaptations 30

Fees

2025/26 entry

UK fees per year:

£12,500 full-time; £6,250 part-time

International fees per year:

£25,300 full-time; £12,650 part-time

Scholarships

The University of Exeter has many different scholarships available to support your education, including £5 million in scholarships for international students applying to study with us in the 2025/26 academic year, such as our Exeter Excellence Scholarships*.

For more information on scholarships and other financial support, please visit our scholarships and bursaries page.

*Terms and conditions apply. See online for details.

Teaching and research

You will receive an internationally-exceptional education, including hands-on experience and training within our unique and world-leading research facilities, such as the Digital Humanities Lab and the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum. 

Research-led teaching ensures module content includes the latest trends in Social Media and Digital Marketing. Our research includes: contemporary media and culture, gamification and critical video game theory, celebrity cultures, promotional cultures, algorithm bias, and user data analysis. 

You will also benefit from a range of visiting expert speakers from industry, and have opportunities to participate in content creation and industry-facing events. 

Facilities

Image of a humanities student looking at an old book

We are exceptionally lucky to have some fantastic facilities and resources on the Streatham Campus.

Digital Humanities Lab

Digital Humanities is increasingly important in all areas of humanities research, including history, archaeology, literatures and languages. This research space enables the examination, preservation and analysis of historical, literary and visual material. Facilities in the lab include:

  • a flagship seminar room equipped with a 4.2-metre video wall, encouraging interactive engagement in a shared display space
  • two state-of-the-art photography labs, including provision for the 2D digitisation of heritage material and primary sources
  • an audio-visual lab with a recording studio and sound editing suite
  • a MakerSpace equipped with 3D scanning and printing equipment

The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum

The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum holds a wide-ranging collection of more than 70,000 film related artefacts and is the largest research archive in any British University.

The collection is available for all students to use as a research and study resource, giving students a highly distinctive and valuable experience of studying and researching film using primary materials, documents and artefacts. State-of-the-art equipment in our Digital Humanities Lab enables the examination and analysis of these materials.

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Meet the Programme Director

I am a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Promotional Media (E&R). I am also the Admission Tutor for Communications. Before the appointment at Exeter, I taught at the University of Greenwich, Cardiff University, and King's College London. I taught a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate subjects in the fields of advertising, media and communication and digital humanities. 

Before entering academia, I worked for Country Garden Real Estate in China as a Senior Brand Manager; as a Journalist for Chinese Southern Daily in Foshan, and UK Chinese Journal in London; and as a Research Associate for China Current Network. I am the vice-president of the UK-China Media and Cultural Studies Association (UCMeCSA), and also a member of IAMCR, ICA, ECREA and MeCCSA. 

Dr Zizheng Yu

Programme Director

Careers

student wearing mortar board on graduation

This MA provides you with valuable graduate employability skills by developing advanced skills in digital literacy, research methods, critical thinking, strategic planning, the application of abstract theory and concepts into tangible outputs, and the ability to gauge the success of such outputs through data analysis.   

These skills can be utilised in a wide range of future careers across, public, private, commercial and third sectors.  

Guest speakers will give you a starting point to develop your own broad network of professional contacts. 

Key areas in which our graduates could work include:   

  • Advertising and market research/analytics
  • Media or Social media management/strategy/consultancy/content creation/campaigning
  • Management consultancy activities
  • Media campaigns
  • Media policy/education
  • Computer programming and consultancy
  • Video, television and music production and publishing
  • Education
  • Charities/NGOs 

Read more

Top 10 icon

Top 10 in the UK for Communication and Media Studies

8th in The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2025

Video Camera icon

Home to the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum

The biggest film-related archive in the UK outside the British Film Institute

Thinking icon: a cog inside a human head

Develop transferable skills and specialist knowledge through interdisciplinary teaching

Briefcase icon

Varied graduate careers