Saint-Louis University - Bruxelles
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2018 - 2019 Programme

Profile


Bachelor's Degree in Information and Communication

 Daytime Programme    180 credits   3 years
 Niveau 6 du Cadre de certification européen (EQF)
 Internshipno   Final assignmentno   Exchange Programmes: yes


Media and communication technologies inhabit our daily lives. Some go so far as to say that our daily lives take place in the media. Mediatisation is a phenomenon that is affecting every aspect of life in society, be it civil life, business relations, the voluntary and not-for-profit sector, the art world, education, ‘ordinary’ social interaction or parent-child relationships. Journalists are no longer ‘monomedia’ and no longer address readers; they today produce content for a range of media and interact with a ‘community’. All kinds of organisations, both public and private, now give a central role to communication in their development strategies. For politicians, the number of followers on Twitter is becoming as important as the democratic legitimacy afforded by elections.  The ways we interact socially are being reconfigured on social network web sites, as are, at the same time, our conceptions of private and public life. New and hugely influential companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon have become the heavyweights in an economy driven by the production of content for media users and the gathering of personal data.

The media and communication landscape is constantly evolving. The task for information and communication sciences (ICS) is to analyse this evolution and to critically reflect on the issues it raises for society (social, cultural, political, ethical, among others).

The ICS connect the human and social sciences. Their object of study is a novel one, located at the crossroads of four fields of inquiry:

• the discourse produced by journalists, politicians, marketers, voluntary and not-for-profit sector organisations, and others;

• interpretations of these discourses circulating in society;

• the technologies that mediatise social relations and more generally the different spheres of social life;

• the social practices that give meaning to discourses and to the uses of communication technologies.

This four dimensional and unique analytical prism highlights the relevance of ICS for a wide range of academic, business and industry fields, including: organisational communication, journalism, political communication, multimedia communication and social media management, intercultural communication, socio-educational communication (prevention campaigns, knowledge mediation, etc.), cinematic scriptwriting and analysis, the performing arts, and information management. This list, which is by no means exhaustive, highlights the range of fields in which ICS plays a role and the diversity of careers that studying ICS can be a springboard for.

Structure

The bachelor in Information and Communication is a first cycle programme (a so-called "transition" bachelor), which comprises 180 credits and is spread over three years. It provides a preparation for several second cycle programmes (Master’s degrees) that our students can follow at another university (for further information, see the “Access to further studies” page).

Saint-Louis University’s Bachelor of Information and Communication programme aims to enable its students to benefit from an interdisciplinary education that best prepares them to face the challenges encountered by communicators and journalists.

The 1st year of the degree is common to all three Political Science study courses organised by the Faculty of Economics, Social and Political Sciences and Communication: political science, information and communication, sociology and anthropology, and therefore includes an introduction to each specific discipline. Besides the will to build the programme around a solid multidisciplinary base, which is one of the trademarks of Saint-Louis University, this shared first year facilitates reorientations early on in the programme: a student can change his orientation in the second year to one of the other two Political Science study courses without having to catch up any courses. 

Disciplinary affiliation is designed to grow throughout the programme. In BAS 2, at least 20 credits are specific to the field of information and communication; In the BAS at least 30 credits are specific to the field.

The programme is structured around: (1) course units presented through traditional in-theatre lectures (providing an introduction to the human and social science disciplines; philosophy, law, history, economics, psychology, sociology, political science, and information and communication sometimes accompanied by engaging learning activities); (2) methodological lessons accompanied by tutorials for applied work (for example: approaches and research methods in social sciences); (3) a thematic workshop in the third year standard programme block, enabling more personalised study in smaller groups. (For more details on the originality and uniqueness of the third year multidisciplinary workshop, refer to the "Workshop" page). Lastly, the programme provides a theoretical and practical initiation to the principles and techniques of journalistic writing and multimedia communication