How to Define the Indefinable

What is the Relationship between Media, Social and Cultural Change?

This is the underlying question of the course, but if the last few weeks have taught me anything, it is that there is no definitive answer to that question. Nor is there a singular approach to the study of media. To be quite honest, introducing this notion of Media Ecology has only served to further complicate my understanding of media studies.

And What Exactly is Media Ecology?

Well, despite my best efforts, I can’t seem to come up with a definitive answer to this question. If anything, the more I read on the subject, the more subjective the term seems to be.

For instance, according to Lance Strate and the Media Ecology Association;

“It is the study of media environments, the idea that technology and techniques, modes of information and codes of communication play a leading role in human affairs.” (1)

While I can appreciate the simplicity of this notion of media ecologies as ‘environments’, I find this definition, and the approach as a whole, to be a distinctly one-sided perspective. The technological determinist slant is all too obvious in the Media Ecology Association’s introduction to the concept.

Neil Postman writes of how the media “force us to play, how media structure what we are seeing, why media make us feel and act as we do.” (2)

Personally, I am inclined to question the extent to which human action interacts with, influences and even shapes the ecologies of media, which is perhaps part of the reason why I am having trouble coming to terms with the readings on this concept.

Mathew Fuller on the other hand, appears to approach the field of Media Ecology with a broader notion of the term.

“The term “ecology” 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” writes Fuller in his book Media Ecologies:  Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture. (3)

It is this approach which I find myself more in agreement with. It appears, to me at least, to be less one sided than the ecologies as ‘environments’ definition above. This looser interpretation of ‘ecology’, seems to allow a wider (and I would argue, more comprehensive) scope of study to the field, but is far more complex (and less definitive) as a result.

I guess maybe that is the point; that this notion of 'ecology' despite being more complex, facilitates a more comprehensive understanding of media by broadening the scope of its study. What this idea of Media Ecology brings to the foreground for me is the complexity of the dynamics between media themselves; media, culture and society; and human experience. Media effects cannot be studied or understood as singular phenomenon. Understanding media as interconnected and interactive, constantly reconfiguring and evolving is, more than anything else, what I will be taking away from this week.

References:

1. Media Ecology Association ‘What is Media Ecology’ <http://www.media-ecology.org/media_ecology/>
2. ibid
3. Fuller, Matthew (2005) ‘Introduction: Media Ecologies’ in Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture Cambridge, MA; MIT Press: pg. 2