Media Ecology: Exploring the Metaphor to Expand the Theory

Abstract

This article introduces media ecology and reflects on its potential usefulness for gaining an understanding of the contemporary mutations of the media system. The first section maps the origins of the field, specifically the development of the ecological metaphor. The second section explores the metaphor by including the concepts of evolution, interface, and hybridization in the media ecology discourse. The concept of evolution creates a theoretical framework for studying the history of media and suggests new concepts and questions about media extinction, survival, and coevolution. The concept of interface focuses on the media, subject, and social interactions. Finally, the analysis of media hybridizations is basic for understanding the appearance of new media that combine different devices, languages, and functions.

Follow the Open Source Road: Contemplating the Ethics of the New Information Ecology

“…To better understand the mechanism of mutual causality inherent in Buddhist scholarship, the following section provides an overview of the theoretical foundations of media ecology. Scolari (2012) provides important context to qualify the term "ecology" within the present discussion of information ethics and open source software. Media ecology "tries to find out what roles media force us to play, how media structure what we are seeing or thinking, and why media make us feel and act as we do" (p. 205).…”

“…From Gutenberg to Google, technological evolution has often created (or coincided with) cultural revolutions, rippling through the socio-political landscape to areas of education, economics, and beyond. The rapid pace at which modern development occurs has led to a surge in scholarly research on digital communication technology and social media platforms (Kuhn, 2007;Levinson, 2012;Scolari, 2012). However, another force is beginning to emerge in the debate over communication media, one that has remained in relative obscurity throughout much of the academic literature.…”

Mediating the spaces of diet and health: A critical analysis of reporting on nutrition and colorectal cancer in the UK

“…A media ecology approach can unpick the complex framing and re--framing of nutrition research in a way that reveals the shifting geographies of responsibility for public health nutrition. Since the 1960s researchers in the emerging field of media ecology have tried to broaden media research (Strate, 2004, Scolari, 2012, Lum, 2009) by looking at the influence of both evolving technology (McLuhan, 1964) as well as the production processes that underpin and shape mass media reporting (Altheide and Schneider, 2013). This approach has been effectively adopted by geographers in the analysis of celebrities' involvement in climate change reporting (Boykoff andGoodman, 2009, Goodman, 2013) who have demonstrated that through 'multi--farious and interacting factors' politicized celebrities operate within a system characterized 'as a diverse field of interconnected factors and forces that importantly circulate in and amongst each other in and on the media landscape' (Boykoff and Goodman, 2009, p397).…”

“…This is in an attempt to broaden my research, using 'media ecology' techniques (Strate, 2004, Scolari, 2012, Lum, 2009, in a way that commonly used media methodologies such as content analysis do not allow. Content analysis is a systematic and often quantitative technique frequently used to study media coverage by seeking to objectively measure media coverage and code its content in order to track themes and discourses.…”

Analysis of the journalism and communication degree programmes of the world’s top-ranked universities. Competencies, objectives and subjects

“…The media ecology affects the generation of new environments that directly impact the users of information and communication technologies (Scolari, 2012(Scolari, , 2013. This impact is widely observed in different elements that make up the educational institution (at all levels): competencies, curricular objectives, type of content, teaching methods, teacher profiles, evaluation systems and teaching resources.…”