Master of Social Sciences in Sustainable Digital Life, Sustainable Societies and Digitalisation
Tampere, Finland
DURATION
2 Years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
Request application deadline
EARLIEST START DATE
Aug 2025
TUITION FEES
EUR 12,000 / per year *
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* per academic year for non-EU/EEA students with a scholarship system for fee-paying students
Introduction
Creating a Digital Future for All
The Sustainable Digital Life program aims to make digital life more sustainable and accessible for all by cherishing diversity and combining critical thinking with a creative mindset.
The modern world is permeated and shaped by digital technologies in all areas of life: communication, learning, playing, creativity, dating, therapy —you name it.
The Master's program in Sustainable Digital Life (SDL) focuses on enhancing our digital lives: the digital systems surrounding us as well as the ways of using, regulating, and designing them. The program offers a unique course portfolio at the intersection of social sciences, design, and media. The program educates interdisciplinary experts who understand digital society from the viewpoints of culture and ethics, as well as comprehend digital systems and how they are produced.
Master’s Programme in Sustainable Societies and Digitalisation focuses on awareness of the diversity of digital cultures. After completing the Master’s Programme students understand the role of digital media and communication technology in today’s and future society and recognize its ethical and societal risks. The program consists of the following academically independent specializations with distinct study profiles:
- Accessibility and Diversity in Digital Services (ADDS)
- Sustainable Digital Life (SDL)
- Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Societies (AISS) (Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Programme)
The program
- Aims to educate creative, analytical, and critical experts in digital media and communication and information technology; experts who are capable of renewing society by envisioning, designing, and evaluating digital services that are ethically sustainable, accessible for everyone, and mindful of social and cultural diversity.
- Focuses on sustainability not only related to digital things but also the way of learning: we ensure that future experts possess skills that are adaptive, far-reaching, and transformative in a variety of fields.
- Has a special focus on accessibility: learning to understand the diversity of users and ways of using digital systems, how to evaluate the accessibility of existing systems, and how to take accessibility into account in design.
- Is genuinely multidisciplinary: the teachers of the program represent various academic disciplines.
- The program's core courses include digital literacy, fundamentals of service design, sustainable design, diverse digital culture, accessibility, and gamification.
Sustainability at Tampere University
- We believe that promoting and educating the development of sustainable technology is a necessary approach to achieving the goal of sustainability.
- As a herald of scholarship, our university recognizes that sustainability is a foundational imperative for various essential systemic entities.
- Sustainability highlights the interconnectedness of economic, social, and ecological processes.
- Sustainable Digital Life especially focuses on the study of the long-term structural change in digital and social systems to maintain social cohesion and solidarity while acknowledging the need to reduce environmental and resource consumption to a sustainable level.
- There are many entities to which the necessity of sustainability pertains: nature, societies and cultures, the humankind. We want to cherish the diversity and resilience within all of these.
- Considering modern digital lives, some various recent developments and trends need to be addressed in the pursuit of sustainability, such as the increasing carbon footprint of computation, increasing power of internet companies, challenges in regulating technology development, homogenization of the digital culture, people’s sense of losing control of their digital lives, information addiction, increasing loneliness and isolation and radicalization through technology.
- Considering modern digital lives, the perspective of the users of technology integrated into their everyday practices calls for critical skills as literacies on technology. From a sustainability perspective, that is about ecological digital literacy.
Admissions
Curriculum
Study contents
The sustainable Digital Life program aims to make digital life more sustainable and accessible for all by cherishing diversity and combining critical thinking with a creative mindset.
The goal is to educate creative, analytical, and critical experts in digital media, communication, and information technology, who are capable of renewing society by designing, facilitating, and evaluating digital services that are ethically sustainable, accessible for everyone, and mindful of social and cultural diversity. The students are aware of the diversity of digital cultures and recognize the varieties of their value bases. They understand the role of digital media and communication technology in today’s and future society and recognize its ethical and societal risks.
The education is project-based since students carry out projects throughout their studies and connect their learning to these projects. Students create portfolios and identify their own skills during their studies. program's core courses offer students fundamentals of service design, sustainable design, digital literacy, diverse digital culture, accessibility, and gamification. Students will study joint core courses along with optional studies in which they can focus on a theme. Students will acquire skills that are needed both in working life and in academia.
The program is genuinely multidisciplinary; programs teachers represent eight different fields: human-technology interaction, media education, audio studies, theatre and drama research, media culture, information studies, game studies, and visual journalism.
Structure of studies
Studies in Sustainable Digital Life consist of the following elements:
- Advanced Studies in Sustainable Digital Life (90 ECTS) form the core of the degree. They enable the students to acquire in-depth theoretical, methodological, and conceptual insight into the field. The studies include various multidisciplinary courses, project work with collaboration partners, and a Master’s thesis. The program utilizes project-based learning. During the two years, students will attend a Project Work course and carry out a research and innovation project in groups. The project work is integrated into the Master’s Thesis.
- Joint Studies (7-12 credits) focus on general orientation to studies and personal study planning, language studies, and academic writing skills.
- Free Choice Studies (18-23 credits)
Scholarships and Funding
Tampere University Tuition Fee Scholarships
Tampere University tuition fee scholarship is an exclusive opportunity awarded to a limited number of the best-performing applicants in each programme.
Tampere University tuition fee scholarships awarded at admission cover 50% of the tuition fees for the programme duration.
Early bird offer
While Tampere University scholarships are available to a limited number of applicants, the early bird offer is available at admission to all fee-paying students. The early bird offer gives a 1500 € reduction on the programme tuition fee during the first year of studies.
Gallery
Career Opportunities
The goal is to educate students both for existing professions and emerging future professions. The graduates can work for example as designers, experts, or analysts in the domains of digital media, information and communication services, various digitalization projects, and the application of artificial intelligence services.
After graduation, employment opportunities depend also on the student’s specialization. Students can specialize themselves with different modules in addition to studying secondary subjects and by that create unique know-how combinations.
Sustainable Digital Life helps students connect with working life as a part of their studies by collaborating with companies and organizations. Students get to know some of the employers already during their studies and get the possibility to carry out projects from real clients from our strategic collaborators.
Co-operation with other parties
Multidisciplinary Project Collaboration
Multidisciplinary project collaboration involves three international Master’s degree programs: Tampere University’s Human-Technology Interaction (HTI), Sustainable Societies and Digitalisation, and Tampere University of Applied Sciences’ Emerging Media (EM). The project topics will come from strategic, long-term partners, who will provide wicked problems that can be explored by the students. We consider team learning and challenge-based learning as the key elements of this cooperation.
Sustainable Digital Life has a strategic long-term collaboration with YLE (Finland's national public broadcasting company). Together, we work with diverse societal topics to make digital services more accessible and sustainable for all. In practice, collaboration takes place in student projects.
Research focus
Interdisciplinarity: Social sciences meet technology development; problem-finding meets problem-solving.
Further study opportunities
The students graduating from the Sustainable Digital Life program are eligible to apply to the doctoral programs of Tampere University. There are two particularly suitable doctoral programs for Sustainable Digital Life graduates:
- The doctoral program in Media, Communication, and Performing Arts (DPMCP)
- The Doctoral Program of Humans and Technologies (DPHAT)
Program Tuition Fee
Program Admission Requirements
Show your commitment and readiness for Grad school by taking the GRE - the most broadly accepted exam for graduate programs internationally.