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BA (Hons) Social Media Management with Integrated Foundation Year

Develop the skills and experience you need to meet the growing demand for social media managers across a wide range of industries. Learn how to grow and engage your audiences as a content creator.

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Jane smiling and laughing at the camera with a Durham microphone
UCAS codeP509
Duration4 years
Fee (UK)£9,535
LocationOn campus

Course summary

Develop the skills and experience you need to meet the growing demand for social media managers across a wide range of industries. Learn how to grow and engage your audiences as a content creator.

You'll experiment with your own social media channels, and grow and engage your own digital communities. Learn to create engaging content and use analytics and attribution to prove impact and understand your audience. Develop social media strategies and organic and paid campaigns. Combine integrated communications approaches across public relations and digital marketing. Delve into ideas about how to communicate, influence and persuade, and explore what makes content shareable and engaging.

You'll get hands-on experience, including managing social media channels and planning social media and PR campaigns and strategies for real clients. We have superb industry contacts and offer regular masterclasses, workshops, and field trips. For example:

  • Masterclasses with Spotify community managers and Yogscast livestreamers
  • Augmented reality lens building workshops with LADbible and Snapchat AR expert Liam O’Neill, who has created lenses for McDonald's, Adidas, New Balance, Toyota, and Maybelline
  • Educational trips to Yogscast and Snapchat head offices

You'll also undertake a week-long placement, building contacts and connections in the industry.

By the end of this course, you'll have the skills, knowledge and experience you need to pursue a career in social media, content and communications.

Integrated Foundation Year

This course is also available with an Integrated Foundation Year. The Integrated Foundation Year is an extra year before starting your three-year undergraduate degree, designed to build your study skills and subject knowledge so you feel ready to succeed.

If you've narrowly missed the entry requirements for the standard three-year route, or have relevant work experience and want to broaden your subject knowledge and study skills before starting your degree, completing an Integrated Foundation Year could be for you. Please note, this route isn't available to international students.

Accreditations and approvals

The course is accredited by the Digital Marketing Institute (DMI). Our public relations modules are accredited by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), the industry’s leading body. The Media Law module is accredited by the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ).You can graduate with an extra qualification from the NCTJ, proving you are legally and ethically safe to publish content.

What you'll study

Many of our courses include a range of modules you can choose from. Some of these options may only be available if you’ve already studied specific required modules. If you’re not sure what you need before picking a module, your course leader can help.

Undergraduate module credits should total 120 credits per academic year. If optional modules are available alongside core modules on your course, you should choose an amount that totals 120 credits.

How you'll learn

On this degree, you’ll learn by doing. You’ll build your own creator channels, grow digital communities, and develop strategies and content for real-world businesses and audiences. You’ll create reports and use digital and social media metrics to analyse and evaluate work that shows real impact. You’ll take part in client projects, working both on your own and in teams on live briefs, pitching ideas, and putting them into action.

Most teaching happens in practical workshops, supported by one-to-ones, placements, and lectures. Your teaching staff include award-winning video content creators, CIPR-award-winning public relations experts, community managers and marketers, and ecommerce professionals with decades of experience.

In your first year, you’ll sit one media law exam as part of the NCTJ certificate. This will ensure you’re legally safe to publish content. Sometimes, you’ll delve further into ideas and research. For example, how influence and persuasion work on social platforms or how we can optimise the spread of information. You’ll present your ideas in formats that suit you, whether that’s in writing, video, or a presentation.

In your final year, you’ll shape your own ‘masterpiece’. This will be a major project that reflects your skills, interests and ambitions as a content creator and social media strategist.

Assessments include practical projects, critical reflections, case studies, essays and presentations.

Entry requirements

Fees and finance support

UK£9,535

Undergraduate fees are set according to rules from Government in line with forecast inflation. The fee for your first year of study for 2026/27 will be £9,535. You'll pay tuition fees for every year of study. Fees may increase every year based on the Retail Price Index.

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See all course tuition fees.

If you're a full-time UK/Irish/EU settled/EU pre-settled student on the Integrated Foundation Year route, you may be eligible to receive financial support to cover your fees for the full four years. UK and EU settled students may also be eligible to receive a maintenance loan.

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UK students

Disclaimer

We want to make sure you have clear and accurate information about our courses. Our website always shows the latest updates. If you’ve applied and been offered a place, we’ll contact you in writing if anything important changes.

View our programme specifications(opens in new tab) for further information about what the course covers, learning outcomes and the skills you'll gain when you graduate.