Media ecology
Encyclopedia
Media ecology is a contested term within media studies having different meanings within European and North American contexts. The North American definition refers to aninterdisciplinary field of media theory and media design involving the study of "symbolic environment, or the socially constructed, sensory world of meanings that in turn shapes our perceptions, experiences, attitudes, and behavior. It is the study of different personal and social environments created by the use of different communication technologies."[1]
Contents
[hide]
• 1 Definitions
• 2 Summary
• 3 Critics
• 4 See also
• 5 References
o 5.1 Notes
• 6 External links
Definitions
In 1977, Marshall McLuhan said that media ecology:
...means arranging various media to help each other so they won't cancel each other out, to buttress one medium with another. You might say, for example, that radio is a bigger help to literacy than television, but television might be a very wonderful aid to teaching languages. And so you can do some things on some media that you cannot do on others. And, therefore, if you watch the whole field, you can prevent this waste that comes by one canceling the other out.[2]
Inspired by McLuhan, Neil Postman founded the Program in Media Ecology at New York University in 1971. He described it as:
Media ecology looks into the matter of how media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling, and value; and how our interaction with media facilitates or impedes our chances of survival. The word ecology implies the study of environments: their structure, content, and impact on people.[3] Postman was also found of saying, "technology giveth and technology taketh away...A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided." The symbolic environment turns everything into entertainment.
Corey Anton, Editor of Explorations in Media Ecology at Grand Valley State University, defines media ecology as:
A broad based scholarly tradition and social practice. It is both historical and contemporary, as it slides between and incorporates the ancient, the modern, and the post-modern. . . .More precisely, media ecology understands the on-going history of humanity and the dynamics of culture and personhood to be intricately intertwined with communication and communication technologies. [4]
Along with McLuhan (McLuhan 1962), Postman (Postman 1985), and Anton, media ecology draws from many authors, including the work of Harold Innis, Walter Ong, Lewis Mumford, Jacques Ellul, Eric Havelock, Susanne Langer, Erving Goffman, Edward T. Hall, George Herbert Mead, Margaret Mead, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Benjamin Lee Whorf, andGregory Bateson.
Summary
The European version of media ecology rejects the North American notion that ecology means environment. Ecology in this context is used 'because it is one of the most expressive language currently has to indicate the massive and dynamic interrelation of processes and objects, beings and things, patterns and matter.' (Fuller 2005:2) Following theorists such as Felix Guattari, Gregory Bateson, and Manuel DeLanda the European version of media ecology as practiced by authors such as Matthew Fuller and Jussi Parikkapresents a post-structuralist political perspective on media as complex dynamical systems.
The North American theory of media ecology is best phrased by Marshall McLuhan, "The medium is the message". The medium is a specific type of media; for example, a book, newspaper, radio, television, film, or email. We are accustomed to thinking the message is separate from the medium, McLuhan saw the message and the medium to mean the same thing. The audience is normally focused on te content and overlook the medium. What we forget is that the content cannot exist outside of the way that it is mediated. McLuhan recognized that the way media works as environments is because we are so immersed in them. "It is the medium that has the greatest impact in human affairs, not specific messages we send or receive(Strate 1-16)." The media shapes us because we partake in it over and over until it becomes a part of us. Different mediums emphasizes different senses and encourages different habits, so engaging in this medium day after day conditions our senses.[5] Different forms of medium also effect what their meaning and impact will be. The form of medium and mode of information determines who will have access, how much information will be distributed, how fast it will be transmitted, how far it will go, and most importantly what form it will be displayed.[6] With society being formed around the dominant medium of the day, the specific medium of communication makes a remarkable difference. McLuhan believed there are three inventions that transformed the world: the phonetic alphabet, the printing press, and the telegraph. Due to these technologies the world was taken from one era into the next.[7]
In order to understand the effects of symbolic environment, McLuhan split history into four periods: the tribal age, the literate age, the print age, and the electronic age. Throughout the structure of their distinctive methods of communication (e.g., oral, written, printed, electronic), different media arouse patterns in the brain that are distinctive to each and every particular form of communication.[7]
The first period in history that McLuhan describes is the Tribal Age, a time of community because the ear is the dominant sense organ. This is also known as an acoustic era because the senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell were far more strongly developed than the ability to visualize. During this time, hearing was more valuable because it allowed you to be more immediately aware of your surroundings, which was extremely important for hunting during this time. Everyone hears at the same time makings listening to someone in a group a unifying act, deepening the feeling of community. In this world of surround sound, everything is more immediate, more present, and more actual fostering more passion and spontaneity. During the Tribal Age, hearing was believing.[8]
The second stage is the Literary Stage, a time of private detachment because the eyes is a dominant sense organ; also known as the visual era. Turning sounds into visible objects radically altered the symbolic environment. Words were no longer alive and immediate, they were able to read over and over again. Hearing no longer becomes trustworthy, seeing was believing. Even though people read the same words, the act of reading is an individual act of singular focus. Tribes didn't need to come together to get information anymore. This is when the invention of the alphabet came about. During this time, when people learned to read, they became independent thinkers[9]
The third stage is the Print Age, mass production of individual products due to the invention of the printing press. It gave the ability to reproduce the same text over and over again, making multiple copies. With printing came a new visual stress, the portable book. I allowed men to carry books, so men could read in privacy and isolated from others. Libraries were created to hold these books and also gave freedom to be alienated from others and from immediacy of their surroundings.[10]
Lastly, the Electronic Age, an era of instant communication and a return to an environment with simultaneous sounds and touch. It started with a device created by Samuel Morse's invention of the telegraph and lead to the telephone, the cell phone, television, internet, DVD, video games, etc. This ability to communicate instantly returned us to the tradition of sound and touch rather than sight. Being able to be in constant contact with the world becomes a nosy generation where everyone knows everyone's business and everyone's business is everyone else's. This phenomenon is called the global village. "We have seen the birth of nationalism which is the largest possible social unit. It occurred because the print media made it possible for government systems to coordinate, which facilitated homogeneous cultures. Now other nations join our nation to form a global community. Nations can easily break apart as fast as they join together like we see in case throughout the former Soviet bloc, in the developing world, and much to our chagrin, in Iraq and Al Qaeda. Strate hope we can find the freedom to step outside the system to understand our media environment and that we can find the discipline to systematize that knowledge and make it available to others."[11]
This possibly will lead to a third stage called the Digital Stage which is solely electronic. This Electronic Age would have a growing number of digital tribes forming around the most specialized ideas, beliefs, values, interests, and fetishes.[12] If McLuhan was alive today, there is no doubt that he would probably speculate on whether the electronic environment is the destiny of mankind, or if there is another media force that has potential hold on our future centuries.
Another aspect of media ecology is the Laws of Media. The Laws of Media Theory is depicted by a tetrad which poses questions with the outcome of developing people's critical thinking skills and to prepare people for "the social and physical chaos" that accompanies every technological advancement/development. There is no certain order for the Laws of Media, the effects occur simultaneously. The four effects are: Enhance: What does it enhance? Obsolesce: What does it obsolesce? Retrieve: What does it retrieve? Reverse: What will it reverse?
"McLuhan (1951) found inspiration in Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” in which a shipwrecked sailor is trapped within a whirlpool, but escapes death by finding the pattern hidden within the vortex. McLuhan relates this to "the social and physical chaos" we feel as we move from one technological development to the other." "The maelstrom is our media environment, and the only way out is through synthesis or pattern recognition. We cannot get out through linear logic and cause-and-effect thinking alone. We need to work dialectically and ecologically, riding through complex systems on the edge of chaos." [13]
According to Neil Postman, Media ecology is concerned with understanding how technologies and techniques of communication control the form, quantity, speed, distribution, and direction of information; and how, in turn, such information configurations or biases affect people’s perceptions, values, and attitudes . . . such information forms as the alphabet, the printed word, and television images are not mere instruments which make things easier for us. They are environments-like language itself, symbolic environments with in which we discover, fashion, and express humanity in particular ways. (Anton 303) [14]
Postman focusses on media technology, process, and structure rather than content. Postman considered making moral judgments was the primary task of media ecology. "I don’t see any point in studying media unless ones so within a moral or ethical context." (Griffin 319) Postman’s media ecology approach asks three questions: What are the moral implications of this bargain? Are the consequences more humanistic or antihumanistic? Do we, as a society, gain more than we lose, or do we lose more than we gain?[7]
Critics
McLuhan's critics state the medium is not the message. They believe that we are dealing with a mathematical equation where medium equal x and message equal y. Accordingly x = y, but really "the medium is the message is a metaphor not an equation. His critics also believe McLuhan is denying the content altogether, when really McLuhan was just trying to show the content in it's secondary role in relation to the medium.
As Lance Strate said: "Other critics complain that media ecology scholars like McLuhan, Havelock, and Ong put forth a “Great Divide” theory, exaggerating the difference between orality and literacy, for example. And it is true that they see a great divide between orality and literacy. And a great divide between word and image. And a great divide between the alphabet, on the one hand, and pictographic and ideographic writing, on the other. And a great divide between clay tablets as a medium for writing and papyrus. And a great divide between parchment and paper. And a great divide between scribal copying and the printing press. And a great divide between typography and the electronic media. And now a great divide between virtuality and reality. I could continue to add to this list, but the point is that there are many divides, which suggests that no single one of them is all that great after all. The critics miss the point that media ecology scholars often work dialectically, using contrasts to understand media."[15]
The North American variant of media ecology is viewed by numerous theorists as meaningless or “McLuhanacy”. These theorists[citation needed] claim that McLuhan used a subjective approach to make a objective claims. The theorists[who?] against McLuhan's idea, also believe that he lacked the scientific evidence to support his claims.[citation needed][7]
Contents
[hide]
• 1 Definitions
• 2 Summary
• 3 Critics
• 4 See also
• 5 References
o 5.1 Notes
• 6 External links
Definitions
In 1977, Marshall McLuhan said that media ecology:
...means arranging various media to help each other so they won't cancel each other out, to buttress one medium with another. You might say, for example, that radio is a bigger help to literacy than television, but television might be a very wonderful aid to teaching languages. And so you can do some things on some media that you cannot do on others. And, therefore, if you watch the whole field, you can prevent this waste that comes by one canceling the other out.[2]
Inspired by McLuhan, Neil Postman founded the Program in Media Ecology at New York University in 1971. He described it as:
Media ecology looks into the matter of how media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling, and value; and how our interaction with media facilitates or impedes our chances of survival. The word ecology implies the study of environments: their structure, content, and impact on people.[3] Postman was also found of saying, "technology giveth and technology taketh away...A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided." The symbolic environment turns everything into entertainment.
Corey Anton, Editor of Explorations in Media Ecology at Grand Valley State University, defines media ecology as:
A broad based scholarly tradition and social practice. It is both historical and contemporary, as it slides between and incorporates the ancient, the modern, and the post-modern. . . .More precisely, media ecology understands the on-going history of humanity and the dynamics of culture and personhood to be intricately intertwined with communication and communication technologies. [4]
Along with McLuhan (McLuhan 1962), Postman (Postman 1985), and Anton, media ecology draws from many authors, including the work of Harold Innis, Walter Ong, Lewis Mumford, Jacques Ellul, Eric Havelock, Susanne Langer, Erving Goffman, Edward T. Hall, George Herbert Mead, Margaret Mead, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Benjamin Lee Whorf, andGregory Bateson.
Summary
The European version of media ecology rejects the North American notion that ecology means environment. Ecology in this context is used 'because it is one of the most expressive language currently has to indicate the massive and dynamic interrelation of processes and objects, beings and things, patterns and matter.' (Fuller 2005:2) Following theorists such as Felix Guattari, Gregory Bateson, and Manuel DeLanda the European version of media ecology as practiced by authors such as Matthew Fuller and Jussi Parikkapresents a post-structuralist political perspective on media as complex dynamical systems.
The North American theory of media ecology is best phrased by Marshall McLuhan, "The medium is the message". The medium is a specific type of media; for example, a book, newspaper, radio, television, film, or email. We are accustomed to thinking the message is separate from the medium, McLuhan saw the message and the medium to mean the same thing. The audience is normally focused on te content and overlook the medium. What we forget is that the content cannot exist outside of the way that it is mediated. McLuhan recognized that the way media works as environments is because we are so immersed in them. "It is the medium that has the greatest impact in human affairs, not specific messages we send or receive(Strate 1-16)." The media shapes us because we partake in it over and over until it becomes a part of us. Different mediums emphasizes different senses and encourages different habits, so engaging in this medium day after day conditions our senses.[5] Different forms of medium also effect what their meaning and impact will be. The form of medium and mode of information determines who will have access, how much information will be distributed, how fast it will be transmitted, how far it will go, and most importantly what form it will be displayed.[6] With society being formed around the dominant medium of the day, the specific medium of communication makes a remarkable difference. McLuhan believed there are three inventions that transformed the world: the phonetic alphabet, the printing press, and the telegraph. Due to these technologies the world was taken from one era into the next.[7]
In order to understand the effects of symbolic environment, McLuhan split history into four periods: the tribal age, the literate age, the print age, and the electronic age. Throughout the structure of their distinctive methods of communication (e.g., oral, written, printed, electronic), different media arouse patterns in the brain that are distinctive to each and every particular form of communication.[7]
The first period in history that McLuhan describes is the Tribal Age, a time of community because the ear is the dominant sense organ. This is also known as an acoustic era because the senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell were far more strongly developed than the ability to visualize. During this time, hearing was more valuable because it allowed you to be more immediately aware of your surroundings, which was extremely important for hunting during this time. Everyone hears at the same time makings listening to someone in a group a unifying act, deepening the feeling of community. In this world of surround sound, everything is more immediate, more present, and more actual fostering more passion and spontaneity. During the Tribal Age, hearing was believing.[8]
The second stage is the Literary Stage, a time of private detachment because the eyes is a dominant sense organ; also known as the visual era. Turning sounds into visible objects radically altered the symbolic environment. Words were no longer alive and immediate, they were able to read over and over again. Hearing no longer becomes trustworthy, seeing was believing. Even though people read the same words, the act of reading is an individual act of singular focus. Tribes didn't need to come together to get information anymore. This is when the invention of the alphabet came about. During this time, when people learned to read, they became independent thinkers[9]
The third stage is the Print Age, mass production of individual products due to the invention of the printing press. It gave the ability to reproduce the same text over and over again, making multiple copies. With printing came a new visual stress, the portable book. I allowed men to carry books, so men could read in privacy and isolated from others. Libraries were created to hold these books and also gave freedom to be alienated from others and from immediacy of their surroundings.[10]
Lastly, the Electronic Age, an era of instant communication and a return to an environment with simultaneous sounds and touch. It started with a device created by Samuel Morse's invention of the telegraph and lead to the telephone, the cell phone, television, internet, DVD, video games, etc. This ability to communicate instantly returned us to the tradition of sound and touch rather than sight. Being able to be in constant contact with the world becomes a nosy generation where everyone knows everyone's business and everyone's business is everyone else's. This phenomenon is called the global village. "We have seen the birth of nationalism which is the largest possible social unit. It occurred because the print media made it possible for government systems to coordinate, which facilitated homogeneous cultures. Now other nations join our nation to form a global community. Nations can easily break apart as fast as they join together like we see in case throughout the former Soviet bloc, in the developing world, and much to our chagrin, in Iraq and Al Qaeda. Strate hope we can find the freedom to step outside the system to understand our media environment and that we can find the discipline to systematize that knowledge and make it available to others."[11]
This possibly will lead to a third stage called the Digital Stage which is solely electronic. This Electronic Age would have a growing number of digital tribes forming around the most specialized ideas, beliefs, values, interests, and fetishes.[12] If McLuhan was alive today, there is no doubt that he would probably speculate on whether the electronic environment is the destiny of mankind, or if there is another media force that has potential hold on our future centuries.
Another aspect of media ecology is the Laws of Media. The Laws of Media Theory is depicted by a tetrad which poses questions with the outcome of developing people's critical thinking skills and to prepare people for "the social and physical chaos" that accompanies every technological advancement/development. There is no certain order for the Laws of Media, the effects occur simultaneously. The four effects are: Enhance: What does it enhance? Obsolesce: What does it obsolesce? Retrieve: What does it retrieve? Reverse: What will it reverse?
"McLuhan (1951) found inspiration in Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” in which a shipwrecked sailor is trapped within a whirlpool, but escapes death by finding the pattern hidden within the vortex. McLuhan relates this to "the social and physical chaos" we feel as we move from one technological development to the other." "The maelstrom is our media environment, and the only way out is through synthesis or pattern recognition. We cannot get out through linear logic and cause-and-effect thinking alone. We need to work dialectically and ecologically, riding through complex systems on the edge of chaos." [13]
According to Neil Postman, Media ecology is concerned with understanding how technologies and techniques of communication control the form, quantity, speed, distribution, and direction of information; and how, in turn, such information configurations or biases affect people’s perceptions, values, and attitudes . . . such information forms as the alphabet, the printed word, and television images are not mere instruments which make things easier for us. They are environments-like language itself, symbolic environments with in which we discover, fashion, and express humanity in particular ways. (Anton 303) [14]
Postman focusses on media technology, process, and structure rather than content. Postman considered making moral judgments was the primary task of media ecology. "I don’t see any point in studying media unless ones so within a moral or ethical context." (Griffin 319) Postman’s media ecology approach asks three questions: What are the moral implications of this bargain? Are the consequences more humanistic or antihumanistic? Do we, as a society, gain more than we lose, or do we lose more than we gain?[7]
Hot vs. Cold Media
McLuhan developed an idea called hot and cold media. Hot media requires very little participation from the audience. It concentrates on one sensory organ at a time. This type of media requires no interpretation because it gives all the information necessary to comprehend. Some examples of hot media include radio, books, and lectures. Cool media requires the audience to be active and fill in information by mentally participating. This is multi-sensory participation. Some examples of cool media are TV, seminars, and cartoons.Critics
McLuhan's critics state the medium is not the message. They believe that we are dealing with a mathematical equation where medium equal x and message equal y. Accordingly x = y, but really "the medium is the message is a metaphor not an equation. His critics also believe McLuhan is denying the content altogether, when really McLuhan was just trying to show the content in it's secondary role in relation to the medium.
As Lance Strate said: "Other critics complain that media ecology scholars like McLuhan, Havelock, and Ong put forth a “Great Divide” theory, exaggerating the difference between orality and literacy, for example. And it is true that they see a great divide between orality and literacy. And a great divide between word and image. And a great divide between the alphabet, on the one hand, and pictographic and ideographic writing, on the other. And a great divide between clay tablets as a medium for writing and papyrus. And a great divide between parchment and paper. And a great divide between scribal copying and the printing press. And a great divide between typography and the electronic media. And now a great divide between virtuality and reality. I could continue to add to this list, but the point is that there are many divides, which suggests that no single one of them is all that great after all. The critics miss the point that media ecology scholars often work dialectically, using contrasts to understand media."[15]
The North American variant of media ecology is viewed by numerous theorists as meaningless or “McLuhanacy”. These theorists[citation needed] claim that McLuhan used a subjective approach to make a objective claims. The theorists[who?] against McLuhan's idea, also believe that he lacked the scientific evidence to support his claims.[citation needed][7]
External links
- Media Ecology Association
- Media Ecology reading list on the MEA website
- A First Look at Communication Theory, see McLuhan Chapter = Media Ecology of Marshall McLuhan/ by Em Griffin and E. J. Park