Farm media: An introduction

Abstract

This essay introduces the first special issue to explore the subject of farm media, which the authors identify as the multiple forms of mediation—representational, infrastructural, and elemental—that reproduce the modern agri-food system. Through this multi-lens framework, media scholars are invited to take the farm seriously as a site of analysis, particularly the recent transformation of agriculture through intensive datafication and its accompanying socio-technical and environmental dimensions. The essay launches these lines of inquiry by reviewing relevant interdisciplinary scholarship, particularly in media studies and critical agrarian studies, and introduces contributor essays exploring the multi-mediation of the farm.