Various academic disciplines are undergoing enormous conceptual turns that are shifting discussions about technology and media. The first is a turn to the Anthropocene, which recognizes how our current geological epoch is being transformed by human activity, largely driven by anthropocentric technology designed to improve the human condition while at the same time disregarding its impact on living systems. The second turn is towards the material, which refocuses our attention on the material conditions of media, technology and reality. For this presentation, I focus on how the emerging concept of ecomedia combines both of these turns to recalibrate how we approach media studies and technology from an ecocentric perspective. Drawing on a novel analytical framework called the “ecomediasphere,” the presentation demonstrates how technological gadgets can be reconceptualized as boundary objects that impact a variety of “ecomediatones,” such as culture, political economy, materiality and lifeworld. This framework updates the “circuit of culture” approach to technology developed by cultural studies by applying an ecocritical critique to media technology, society and culture.
General Principles of Intellectual Property: Concepts of Intellectual Proper...
The Ecomedia/sphere: Technology as Ecomedia
1. The Ecomedia/sphere:
Technology as Ecomedia
Antonio López, PhD
Chair & Associate Professor
John Cabot University
What is Technology?
Portland, OR
2019
This work is licensed
under a Creative
Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-
ShareAlike 4.0
International License.
2. Media ecosystem approach
Medium grows culture
• Medium is a carrier of something (a mixture of nutrients
“needed for growth”)
• Human society is an organism that depends on nutrients
for growth
• Media ecology: society is shaped by medium of
communication i.e. print or internet
• Media environments grow culture
• Internet is “growing” something new, but to what effect?
“Blogging and the media ecosystem,”
John Naughton (2006)
3. Media ecosystem approach
Some media ecosystems
• World-ecology:
capitalism is an
ecosystem
• “Facebook ecosystem”
“iPhone ecosystem”
• “News ecosystem”
• Regional media
ecosystems (i.e. Italy,
Europe, Hong Kong,
China, globe, etc.)
Media as ecosystems
Media ecosystem is the
relationship between the media
environment and its members
Like ecology, smaller
ecosystems are embedded in
larger ecosystems
New technologies, events,
members can “disturb” system,
change it
6. Related/subfields
• Green cultural studies
• Ecocriticism
• Ecolinguistics
• Ecocinema
• Media ecology
• Environmental communication
• Environmental humanities
• Postcolonial ecocriticism
• Mediamaterialism/ecomaterialism/infrastructure studies
• Affective ecology
• Slow media
Ecomedia: Key Issues
(Rust et al)
Three key themes:
• Representation
• Communication
• Materiality
Ecomedia—“the intermediation of everything” (Cubitt, Sustainable Media, p. 166)
Ecomedia reframes media as ecological media. There are no media that are inseparable
from the material conditions of the environment that produced them.
7. Environmental ideology and ethics
“Carmanah Contrast,” Robert Bateman, 1989
Source: http://robertbateman.ca/paintings/89-04CarmanahContrast.html
8. Environmental Ideology
“…a way of thinking about the natural world that a person uses
to justify actions towards it.”
Corbett p. 26
Ecological Ethics
“how human beings ought to behave in relation to non-human
nature”
Curry, 2006, p. 47
12. World
(mental model/ideology/world system)
Earth
(physical ecosystem/Earth system)
Political eco/nomyCulture
Lifeworld Ecomaterialism
Ecomediasphere
Cultural productionSymbolic order
Materials extraction,
manufacture, production
Physical ecosystems
EmbodiednessAffect/ Sensory
experience
Bioculture/languaculture
Time/space
Affective pop culture
Medium properties
“Sphere” but web-like
Defamiliarize w/
new language
Heuristic
Orientation tool
discourses
14. Necker cube
Image source: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/philosophy-of-technology/0/steps/26324
Don Ihde: “multistability”; technology are
only what they are in use
16. Ecomediasphere
Four “scapes” of
media commons Ecoculture
Media-centric/qualitative
(text and meanings)
Text and discourse analysis of
media texts; mapping cultural
behaviors and attitudes
Political Economy
Socio-centric/quantitative
(social forces)
Ideological structure of
the global economics
system; political
economy of media
Ecomaterialism
Ecology and
environmental studies,
material infrastructure
The material conditions of
media and environment,
including extraction,
production, e-waste,
energy and emissions;
medium properties
Lifeworld
Phenomenology, reception
studies, media ecology
Media’s sensory affect and
impact on our perception of time,
space and place;
sensory responses;
cognitive dispositions
17. World
(mental models/ideology/world system)
Earth
(physical ecosystem/Earth system)
Ecomediasphere
Socioenvironmental
realms:
World System/
Earth System
Spheres
Commons/
Enclosure
Biosphere
Ecosphere
Ethnosphere
Semiosphere
Technosphere
Ecomediasphere
18. World
(mental model/ideology/world system)
Earth
(physical ecosystem/Earth system)
Political economyEcoculture
Lifeworld Ecomaterialism
Ecomediasphere
Ecologies of
interconnected
networks
Mental ecology
Political/social ecologyCultural ecology
Physical ecology
19. Political
economy
Ecoculture
Lifeworld Ecomaterialism
Ecomediasphere
Emerging disciplines
of ecomedia
Affective ecology Media materialism
Flow/materials ecology
Eco-materialism
Green cultural/media studies
Ecocriticism
Ecofeminism
Post-colonial ecocriticism
Environmental communication
Media archeology
Media infrastructure
Ecomedia studies
Ecocinema studies
Media ecology
Ecolinguistics
20. World
(mental model/ideology/world system)
Earth
(physical ecosystem/Earth system)
Political economyEcoculture
Lifeworld Ecomaterialism
Ecomediasphere
Boundary work
Ecomediatones
(ecotone, edge
ecology)
Cultural productionSymbolic order
Materials extraction,
manufacture, production
Physical ecosystems
EmbodiednessAffect/ Sensory
exp.
Bioculture/languaculture
Time/space
Affective pop culture
Medium properties
Ideology
Anthrop. vs Eco
discourses
21. Political
Eco/nomy
Ecoculture
Lifeworld Ecomaterialism
Gadget
Cognitive dispositions
Emotions
Medium properties
Material reality
Political and economic
forces
Social and cultural practices
Beliefs
Ideology/Cosmology
Affordances/constraints
Beliefs Platform design
Political economy
• Carbon-capitalism
• “Oilygarchy”
• “Deep media”
• Advertising
• Consumerism
• Attention economy (legacy
and social media)
• Surveillance capitalism
• Extractivism, externalization
• Platform capitalism
• Planned obsolescence
• Neocolonialism/globalization
• Amazon, Google, Apple,
Facebook, Microsoft
• “Appconn”/”Chimerica”
Ecoculture
(beliefs)
• Values/eco-ethics
• Anthropocentric vs. ecocentric
• Consumerism
• Racism, sexism
• Egalitarianism
• Language frames/discourses
• Green cultural citizenship
Ecomaterialism
(affordances/constraints)
• Shareability/spreadability
• Algorithms
• Interacive
• E-waste
• Emissions
• EMFs
Lifeworld
(cognitive dispositions)
• Selective exposure, confirmation bias, reality
maintenance, screen addiction, etc.
• Addiction, attention
• Emotional response, alienation, sense of
place
• Affect
Labor practices
22. Political
Eco/nomy
Eculture
Lifeworld Ecomaterialism
Fake
Climate
News
Cognitive dispositions
Emotions
Medium properties
Material reality
Political and economic
forces
Social and cultural practices
Beliefs
Ideology
Affordances/constraints
Beliefs Platform design
Political eco/nomy
• Carbon- and consumer-
based capitalism
• Attention economy (legacy
and social media)
• Far-right media ecosystem
• Platform capitalism
Ecoculture
(beliefs)
• Values (white-nationalist, conservative,
liberal, green, radical)
• Anthropocentric vs. ecocentric
• Language frames/discourses
• “Six Americas”
Ecomaterialism
(affordances/constraints)
• Shareability/spreadability
• Algorithms
• Interacive
Lifeworld
(cognitive dispositions)
• Selective exposure, confirmation bias,
reality maintenance, screen addiction,
etc.
• Emotional response
• Affect
23. Political eco/nomyEcoculture
Lifeworld Ecomaterialism
Ecomedia/sphere
Example ecomedia/
sphere analysis
Mad Max:
Fury Road
(2015)
Ecofeminist themes
Biopolitics
Ecoapocolypse
Genre (car chase,
post-apocalypse)
Identities (gender)
Cognitive response
Affect of spectacle
Violence
Firstness
Film as a global commodity
Industrial characteristics of film production
Film as a material object
Environmental problems
related to production
Ideology
Response of audience
Film language
Film critics, Rotten Tomatoes
Ideology
Sound, image
Welcome and thanks for your interest in the pedagogical aspects of ecomedia. I’m Antonio Lopez and I’m recording this from my office in Rome, Italy.
I’m suffering a bit from current environmental conditions, so please forgive me for sounding a bit stuffed up.
Public policy is impacted by how environmental issues are framed in the media; and consumerism promoted by marketing drives environmental destruction.
Which brings us to the ecomediasphere. In Greening Media Education I started to model this as the “media wheel” but I’m revising it to reflect a more holistic perspective that a sphere metaphor implies.
OK, so here is the mediasphere. At first glance this probably looks very complex, but don’t worry. I will go through and methodically explore its different elements.
A few things to note: Though I call it a sphere to imply that it should be thought of beyond two-dimensions, I also want to emphasize its web-like characteristic,
In the sense that if you touch one part of it, it affects all the other parts.
I also want to emphasize that this is a heuristic, it’s an orientation tool to think with.
Th way it works is we start with the concept of a media object, which is like a boundary object.
A boundary object is something that has commonly agreed upon characteristics but its meaning and purpose changes according to context.
For example, a smartphone will have different purposes according to designers, manufacturers, users, app developers, experts, workers, and users.
This is somewhat similar to the circuit of culture approach developed in cultural studies.
A media object can be a media text, gadget or platform as exemplified on the right side of the slide.
The sphere is divided into four lenses, inspired by Appadurai’s concept of scapes.
Here I identify the four main scapes and their focus (read)
It is also divided into two interconnected realms as conceptualized by socioenvironmental theorists: world system and earth system
The world system is somewhat like the superstructure of the global economy
The earth system is quite literally the physical and material characteristics of this system.
I have also mapped various different “spheres” that can be thought of as layors, with the ecomediasphere as
the mediating component between the ethnosphere/semiosphere and the biosphere/ecosphere
Here I’m mapping how the mediasphere roughly corresponds with the concept of different ecologies as identified by Guattari in his Three Ecologies,
although I have taken the liberty to transform them into four ecologies.
Here I have tentatively mapped some of the emerging disciplines of ecomedia studies as the plot within the different spheres.
Finally, I want to introduce the idea of doing boundary work between the different scapes.
In landscape ecology, a transition zone between two biomes is an ecotone such as the between a field and a forest.
In the mediasphere, an ecomediatone is a transition area between two scapes.
So if you look at the space between dotted lines, you will see there are various different transition zones that combine elements of the adjacent scapes (read)
As a class discussion you could debate whether or not these boundaries make sense.
Th way it works is we start with the concept of a media object, which is like a boundary object.
A boundary object is something that has commonly agreed upon characteristics but its meaning and purpose changes according to context.
For example, a smartphone will have different purposes according to designers, manufacturers, users, app developers, experts, workers, and users.
This is somewhat similar to the circuit of culture approach developed in cultural studies.
A media object can be a media text, gadget or platform as exemplified on the right side of the slide.
Th way it works is we start with the concept of a media object, which is like a boundary object.
A boundary object is something that has commonly agreed upon characteristics but its meaning and purpose changes according to context.
For example, a smartphone will have different purposes according to designers, manufacturers, users, app developers, experts, workers, and users.
This is somewhat similar to the circuit of culture approach developed in cultural studies.
A media object can be a media text, gadget or platform as exemplified on the right side of the slide.
So how does this come together as an analytical project?
If we take the media object of Mad Max: Fury Road, we can examine it from the perspective of the different scapes. (read)