Category Archives: Blog

MSc in Digital and Social Media Marketing

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Thinking about a career in Digital Marketing? Looking to make the move into Marketing but don’t know where to start? Then Lancaster University’s new MSc Digital and Social Media Marketing is for you!

What makes it different?

Our MSc in Digital and Social Media Marketing has been designed with industry in mind. Your teaching team will include real-world industry practitioners, alongside academic experts with published research on many of the topics covered in this course. From content management and SEO to social media engagement and influencers, this course will equip you with the skills you need to thrive in any digital-related role.

What will I study?

In the first term, you will study alongside our MSc Marketing students, learning the fundamentals of Marketing at postgraduate level, including topics such as consumer behaviour and research methods. In the second term, you will study modules exclusively focused on digital marketing, including an expanded module on digital marketing and social media in practice, and a dedicated module on influencer marketing.

These brand-new modules have been designed exclusively for this course, with case studies and examples based on the module leaders’ real world industry experience. While working on your studies, you will also create a digital portfolio, which will form part of your assessment, and will also serve as a useful tool to make you more employable and give you that edge in a competitive jobs market.

Who can study this degree?

This degree is suitable for anyone with a good 2:1 undergraduate degree. So whether you are from the arts and humanities, or perhaps you studied computer science or even engineering, you are welcome to enrol on this course.

The only proviso to this is that if you have already done Marketing at undergraduate level (or indeed, if you have already completed several Marketing modules at undergraduate level), we recommend you apply for the MSc Advanced Marketing Management. Be reassured, there is plenty of digital content on the Advanced Marketing Management degree as well. I know because I teach it!

Where can I find out more?

You can find more information about the course in our online postgraduate prospectus.

As programme director, I am more than happy to set up an online meeting with anyone who think they might be interested in taking this course.

If you have any questions, you can also send me an email: m.ryder@lancaster.ac.uk, or message me on LinkedIn.

About me

Dr Mike Ryder is lecturer in Marketing and Programme Director of the MSc Digital and Social Media Marketing. Prior to his life in academia, Mike spent 10+ years working in a range of content and digital roles in video games, healthcare and higher education. His website is www.mjryder.net.

Dr Mike Ryder

Reflections on my Masters degree – 10 years on

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October 2024 marks the 10 year anniversary of what is perhaps the proudest achievement of my academic life.

In 2014 I submitted my Masters dissertation after what had been a trying two years of studying part-time while holding down an extremely stressful full-time job as a senior writer at a healthcare PR agency based in Whitstable. My family was also going through an intense period of trauma, the repercussions of which are still being felt to this day.

To make matters worse, I was being bullied at work by my boss (the business owner) who took quite badly to the news that I might want to leave my job, and so started a campaign of harassment against me. This culminated in the colleagues in my shared office being moved downstairs to leave me in an office on my own as some sort of ‘punishment’ for daring to suggest that I might want to leave.

It was a very tough time indeed.

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The gender debate in 825 words

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There is a debate raging at the heart of modern society. It is based on two key questions:

  • What is a woman?
  • What is a man?

There are two main perspectives in this debate:

1) Scientific view: Sex is binary. It is based on chromosomes and our ability to produce ‘gametes’ (i.e. eggs and sperm). It is based on thousands/millions of years of evolution. Our bodies are fundamentally ‘sexed’. We may be able to change certain physical appearances relating to our bodies, but we are still biologically either one sex or the other – male or female.[1]

2) Gender identity view: Sex is not binary, but a spectrum. It is not something that can be measured, but rather, it is something that we ‘know’. It is personal to us, and only we can ever know it. It is part of our personal identity. Some people may feel as though they don’t fit in their bodies – they don’t feel comfortable with the sex/gender they were assigned at birth. In these cases people may declare that they are of a different gender and so ‘change’ their sex.

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A sector in crisis: a systematic analysis of care home websites in Lancashire, UK

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Back in 2022 I conducted some research into the digital marketing practices of care homes in Lancashire, UK. Such is the slow pace of academic publishing, I have decided to publish what I found here on my website (July 2024), in the hope that authorities might use this report as a motivator for change. While some of the examples I found in 2022 have been updated, I notice that many still have not changed some two years later. This is incredibly worrying, especially given the legal ramifications, and impact on patient choice.

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What the ‘right to die’ debate tells us about sovereignty

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Many readers will be familiar with the ongoing debate in the UK around the ‘right to die’. The campaign group Dignity in Dying is calling for a change in the law with a new assisted dying bill to give terminally ill people choice in how and when they die.

However, things aren’t as simple as they may first seem. While many people may well argue that developed nations should not treat their citizens worse than animals, there have been many dissenting voices who suggest that an assisted dying bill may put pressure on people to take their own lives; it may even be a ‘slippery slope’ of legislation that discriminates against the most vulnerable people.

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