Centre for Global Media and Communications

We live in a media-saturated age. So it is impossible to appreciate how people think about and act towards the world and one another without a critical and in depth understanding of the many ways they communicate and mediate the world around them.

We need to ask what concerns and hopes they have; how should we address comparatively the global role of mass and digital media in contemporary politics and conflict, as well as processes of exclusion, inequalities, development, participation and empowerment.

By virtue of our specialist expertise we have an unparalleled knowledge of different non-Western cultures that conventional global media programmes simply cannot offer.

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The interdisciplinary study of global media and communication at SOAS is reflected in the expanding doctoral research at the Centre for Global Media and Communication.

Our research students use interdisciplinary approaches and methods for the study of an exceptionally wide range of topics, both theoretical and empirical, on issues related to global and digital media, political communication and cultures, with a particular focus on Africa, the Middle East and Asia. 

Our research topics include: political communication, digital media and activism, political economy of news media; social movements; migration; diasporas; ethnic minorities; transnational communities; digital technologies and development and digital cultures in the Global South. Our research students work on a variety of topics including media histories, gender and media, documentary and refugees, conflict and journalism practice, feminist activism, solidarity movements and the media and political communication of non-state actors.

The centre pays particular attention to doctoral students’ acquisition of critical theoretical skills and in-depth regional, linguistic and cultural knowledge of diverse communication forms and practices.

The PhD in Global Media and Communication is a research degree involving original research on some aspect of contemporary theoretical and global issues in global media and digital cultures in diverse contexts as well as developed critique of Eurocentrism.

We specialise in the critical analysis of media industries and systems, their contents and their audiences in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and their diasporas, an approach equally well-suited to research on Latin American, East European and mainstream ‘Western' media. We encourage research aimed at de-colonising global media studies through grounded theory and methodological research.