Media Ecology

Analog Analogue: U.S. Automotive Radio as Mobile Medium

by Matthew Killmeier

The Mobile Media Reader, eds. Noah Arceneaux and Anandam Kavoori. (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), 40-54.

This chapter assays the history of postwar U.S. automotive radio as a mobile medium--a communications form that... more This chapter assays the history of postwar U.S. automotive radio as a mobile medium--a communications form that facilitates psychic and accompanies physical mobility – that provides an analogue for subsequent communications developments. Automotive radio expressed and complemented dialectically intertwined centrifugal and centripetal tendencies in U.S. society. Its history grounds three more general theses aimed at amplifying historical understanding of mobile media. First, mobile media build upon existing communications linkages, but over time reconfigure them as new communications exchanges. Second, successful mobile content complements the particular characteristics of the mobile medium’s development and cultural usage. Third, mobile media are characterized by mobile privatization, mutually constitutive with segmentation and increasing everyday and aggregate mobility.

Technological Infestation—Human Becoming Insect: Parikka’s Insect Media

by Mark Coté

Review of Jussi Parikka, Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. 281 pp. US $25 (Paper). ISBN: 9780816667406
Theory & Event, Volume 15, Issue 1, 2012

Online communication patterns in low complexity project groups. Tasks, channels and functions.

by Fabian Bethge

Co-authored with Ana-Despina Tudor, Yuan Bo and Thomas Jung-Böhmcker

This paper investigated online communication patterns inside of four student project groups. The main goal of this... more This paper investigated online communication patterns inside of four student project groups. The main goal of this study was to get insights to regularities that influence the selection of specific communication patterns out of the overwhelming range of
online communication applications. A communication pattern was defined to consist of a task, a communication function and a channel. Respondents were told to make conceptual diagrams by connecting pre-defined snippets for tasks, channels and
functions in a way that represents their individual communication for the project. Afterwards they have been interviewed about their conceptual diagrams. The results show that those patterns are influence both by individual group processes and by specific technological factors that are not group specific.

Attention Deficit in the classroom exacerbated by cell phones

by Greg Graham

An article published on NPR's website MediaShift

There never has been -- nor will there ever be -- a more dynamic learning context than face-to-face in close... more There never has been -- nor will there ever be -- a more dynamic learning context than face-to-face in close proximity. Everything possible should be done to protect that timeless environment from interruption and distraction

A Pedagogy of Fluency in a Densely Woven World

by Greg Graham

My Masters Thesis

    Evidence indicates that literacy and critical thinking of high school and college graduates is in... more     Evidence indicates that literacy and critical thinking of high school and college graduates is in decline. This paper asserts that a primary cause of this decline is ubiquitous media technology. Students are exposed to a constant stream of entertainment, information and digital sociality, which tends to fill all the gaps of their lives. Historically, these gaps have provided opportunities for engaging in “meaning-making” activities like personal banter, storytelling, sitting down with a good book, or contemplating matters of personal importance. This thesis proposes two keys for getting literacy and critical thinking back on track through the first-year writing classroom: 1) emphasizing the recovery of fluency through students’ personal narratives presented in an oral, face-to-face context, and 2) sharpening students’ attentional skills by fostering the meditative pause in the classroom and equipping them for “desert island discourse,” which composition teacher and theorist Peter Elbow defines as “the ability to talk reflectively to ourselves.”

Revolutionary Tactics, Media Ecologies, and Repressive States

by Adam Fish

with Ramesh Srinivasan

Technonatures Introduction White Wilbert

by Damian White

An attempt to survey and think through the political implications of hybridity discourses such as Latour and Haraway for environmental politics. This is the introductory chapter from D.White and C.Wilbert (Eds) Technonatures: Environments, Technologies, Spaces, and Places in the Twenty-first CenturyISBN13: 978-1-55458-150-4, 2009.

Lots of other really interesting cuts in the book from Erik Swyngedouw, Sarah Whatmore, Mike Michael, Steve Hinchliffe and others ...check it out at Available from http://www.wlu.ca/press/Catalog/white-wilbert.shtml

'What will they say in England?', PhD introduction

by Kenton Storey

PhD Dissertation, 2008-2011.
This dissertation is a comparative analysis of New Zealand’s and Vancouver Island’s... more PhD Dissertation, 2008-2011.
This dissertation is a comparative analysis of New Zealand’s and Vancouver Island’s print culture between 1853 and 1862. It utilises the colonial press as a key archive to track the resonance of ideas and arguments across the British Empire at a time when violence in the colonies called imperial authority into question. It demonstrates that in this moment of imperial crisis, humanitarian language remained politically efficacious and widely deployed in both New Zealand and Vancouver Island. This usage occurred in spite of and sometimes because of colonists’ anxiety related to the threat of indigenous violence. The popularity of humanitarianism was also influenced by the press’ symbolic role as an embodiment of public opinion and the British Empire’s status as an agent of Providence. Influenced by Harold Innis and James Carey, this dissertation pays close attention to the mechanics of news transmission, especially how the practice of ‘cut and paste’ journalism reproduced colonial news across the British Empire. Forms of argument mattered just as much as facts in this context.
Through a comparative approach, this dissertation is able to assess the features both common and unique to New Zealand and Vancouver Island, including the effects of their divergent locations within imperial networks. While New Zealand had established press connections with Great Britain and other settler colonies, newspaper editors in Vancouver Island considered themselves on the edge of empire. Indeed, New Zealand colonists’ perceptions of metropolitan surveillance shaped interpretations of the Taranaki war. In contrast, Vancouver Island’s isolation facilitated an interpretive dichotomy. While the colonial press offered pervasive reportage of local Aboriginal violence, Vancouver Island’s boosters provided metropolitan readers with disarming accounts of local Aboriginal peoples and no details of colonists’ anxiety. Coverage of anxiety and violence and the use of humanitarian themes often coalesced, informed by colonial editors’ imagined audiences, colonial executives’ ties to missionary humanitarians, and perceptions of metropolitan control.

"Risk, Digital Literacy, and In/formal Learning Environments in School"

by Jacqueline Vickery

Forthcoming 2012 in Learning, Media, and Technology (Special Issue on Digital Literacy and Informal Learning)

Abstract: Young people's immersion in social media environments has engendered public concern over whether we are... more Abstract: Young people's immersion in social media environments has engendered public concern over whether we are witnessing a rise of a culture of distractibility and the loss of basic literacy. At the same time, many see promise in new networked and interactive technologies which enable access to a wealth of online information and highly customized and engaged forms of learning (Jenkins, 2008; Ito, 2010, Watkins, 2009). The reality is that new media represent both risks and opportunities that are distributed unevenly among different populations of young people and we are witnessing a growing gap between the learning mediums with which young people engage in school and out of school (Livingstone, 2009). This gap between the more engaging and social learning environments that young people encounter outside of school, and the top-down and standardized curriculum that they encounter in most classrooms, is the source of a troubling and growing generation gap that is leading to missed opportunities for learning and engagement.

Employing a collaborative ethnographic approach (Foley, 2002), we focus on the media ecologies (Horst, Herr-Stephenson, and Robinson, 2010) of 12 teens selected from an afterschool digital media club at a lower income and ethnically diverse high school in central Texas.Our research explores how participants engage with media as part of their daily lives and the role of family and peers in shaping participants’ critical engagement with digital media. Of particular interest is the ways in which perceptions of risk and digital literacy structure participants’ engagement and understanding of digital media practices, for example issues of privacy, reputation management, and responsible digital media use. Our data consists of a) in-depth interviews conducted over a four month period with teens about digital media, b) in-home observations and mapping of media, and c) textual analysis of communicative practices (e.g. text messages, Facebook, games, etc.). Additionally, we ask participants to utilize various technologies (e.g. blogs, photos, videos) to explain the role of digital media in their lives. This offers us a more nuanced understanding of their relationship with media and employment of digital skills and also affords participants a voice in our research. Together this research provides crucial insight into participants’ engagement with digital media and the ways in which schools and families can empower opportunities for teens to acquire literacy skills and a critical understanding of digital media.

Democracy and the constitution of audiences: A comparative media theory perspective

by Ian Angus

Auto-prognosis of a Comparative Media Theorist

by Ian Angus

“Auto-prognosis of a Comparative Media Theorist” The Semiotic Review of Books, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2005.

Interview with Ian Angus on Communication Theory by Laureano Ralon

by Ian Angus

Unhomely at Home: Dwelling with Domestic Robots

by Nicholas Anderson

Published in MediaTropes, 2009

Caribbean Pirates or Robin Hood’s crowd? Perceptions of Illegal Behaviors

by Valentina Bazzarin

Complete title: Caribbean Pirates or Robin Hood’s crowd? Perceptions of Illegal Behaviors and warning signals in Internet seas and forests comparing American and Italian adolescents’ perspective.
Co-authored with Cosimo Marco Scarcelli, Stefano Ghirlanda
Published in McLuhan Galaxy Conference Understanding Media, Today
Conference Proceedings
Pag. 59

One of the most well-known quotation by McLuhan is from “The Global Village” (1962): “Technology environments are not... more One of the most well-known quotation by McLuhan is from “The Global Village” (1962): “Technology environments are not merely passive containers of people but are active processes that reshape people and other technologies alike” (p. 2).
This quote is particularly relevant today, especially for children and adolescents, for whom the reshaping also involves the representation of what is legal and illegal, as well as their awareness of laws and rules intended to protect individuals from the risks of the virtual world (i.e. child grooming, cyber-bullism, privacy of personal or medical data, etc.), and of those intended to protect intellectual property or economic interests.

Sex in the Digital Age: Media Ecology and Megan's Law

by Brett Lunceford

Lunceford, Brett. "Sex in the Digital Age: Media Ecology and Megan's Law." Explorations in Media Ecology, 9, no. 4 (2010): 239-44.

This essay considers adolescent sexting from a media ecology standpoint, suggesting that in addition to the... more This essay considers adolescent sexting from a media ecology standpoint, suggesting that in addition to the technologizing of sexuality one must also begin to consider the sexualizing of technological systems.

That's no think tank, that's my lobbyist

by Glen Fuller

Opinion Piece

Do think tanks simply become the mouthpieces of their sponsors? Or do they have a high... more Opinion Piece

Do think tanks simply become the mouthpieces of their sponsors? Or do they have a high calling?

I locate the function of think tanks in a "post-political" era and argue that they are designed to produce "political enthusiasm" for a given hegemony.

The Body Medium and Media Ecology: Disembodiment in the Theory and Practice of Modern Media

by Matthew Killmeier

Proceedings of the Media Ecology Association 10 (2009): 35-47.

This essay explores the body as the radical medium that intersects with all communication media. Therefore the body... more This essay explores the body as the radical medium that intersects with all communication media. Therefore the body medium is particularly germane for media ecology. I argue that modern communication media disembody through reducing or negating the body as a medium. Communication media disembody because they are predicated upon a theory that posits the separation of body and mind. This theory grounds the creation, implementation, and practices of communication media. As communication media are highly reflexive, disembodied theory and practices have great socio-cultural import. Throughout the essay, the work of Harold Innis and James W. Carey is used to demonstrate the value
of engaging the body as medium, and to stimulate connections with media ecology.

Phileas Fogᵍ, or the Cyclonic Passepartout: On the Alchemical Elements of War

by Dan Mellamphy

Dan Mellamphy and Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Forthcoming in Ed Keller, Nicola Masciandaro and Eugene Thacker (eds.), Proceedings of the First International Cyclonopedia Symposium (New York: Punctum Books, 2012 http://www.createspace.com/3790549) 192-212.

http://tiny.cc/cyclonopedia

This paper, written... more http://tiny.cc/cyclonopedia

This paper, written for the First International
Cyclonopedia Symposium (http://www.newschool.edu/
parsons/events.aspx?id=61278) in which we participated
along with a group of our graduate students from the CSTC,
engages the theories of War that have been articulated in
Reza Negarestani’s text, and specifically the notion of
the hyper-camouflaged agent of militarized taqiyya.
The latter (the agent of militarized taqiyya) is
correlated in our essay with three distinct
yet inter-related strands in and of
Cyclonopedia’s military analysis:
one that is “mathematical” (namely
geometrical analyses of trisonic cyclones);
one that is “mythological” (namely the analyses of
the Assyrian “Lamassu complex”); and one that is perhaps
more straightforwardly as opposed to obliquely (i.e. geo-
metrically and mythologically) “militant” and “military”:
the analyses of the militant religious Naphtanese
or People of Napht, a “transient omnipresence
inside and outside the battlefield” whose
tactics and strategies are based on “the belief
that War has a life of its own” ...The Naphtanese them-
selves endeavor to become the ‘Fog of War’, and we argue
in the present work that agents of militarized taqiyya are
equivalents within so-called ‘peace’-time of this
becoming-‘fog’ -- but whereas the Naphtanese fog
is akin to the black smoke of the battlefield (the earthly
vapors of the Ancient Greek ‘Aer’), the fog of taqiyya
is far more aethereal (akin to the Ancient Greek
‘Aether’, related to ‘Aer’ insofar as it is a
rarified form of the latter, ‘Ae[the]r’).
What Negarestani calls “the militarization of peace”
brings into play an entire aethereal network
and an alchemy of such [a]ethernet-
works.

Walter Ong and the Willard Preacher: Bringing the Public Speaking Classroom to Orality

by Brett Lunceford

Lunceford, Brett. “Walter Ong and the Willard Preacher: Bringing the Public Speaking Classroom to Orality,” Explorations in Media Ecology, 7, no. 3 (2008): 225-233.

Vestiges of orality still exist and can be found if one looks carefully enough. This essay describes my experiences of... more Vestiges of orality still exist and can be found if one looks carefully enough. This essay describes my experiences of taking students in an introductory public speaking class to watch the “Willard Preacher,” who is an unofficial fixture at our university. The Willard Preacher exhibits several of the characteristics of oral cultures described by Walter Ong. Observing the Willard Preacher provides students a concrete example of how oral style works in a natural setting and demonstrates some of the core differences between a speech that is written and one that has been crafted for oral delivery.

Reconsidering Technology Adoption and Resistance: Observations of a Semi-Luddite

by Brett Lunceford

Lunceford, Brett. “Reconsidering Technology Adoption and Resistance: Observations of a Semi-Luddite.” Explorations in Media Ecology, 8, no. 1 (2009): 29-47.

The question of how and why people adopt technologies is an area that has received great scrutiny, but less attention... more The question of how and why people adopt technologies is an area that has received great scrutiny, but less attention is given to those who willingly choose to avoid particular technologies. This article considers current models of technology adoption and explores how technology influences us as a society and individually, paying special attention to how large-scale shifts in technological change come to bear on individuals who choose not to adopt specific technologies. By combining scholarship in the information sciences with observations from media ecology theorists, this article proposes a more nuanced view of technology adoption and resistance.