Media Ecologies
The term ‘media ecologies’ is part of the attempt to make sense of communication and information in the modern world. No longer is communication limited to human biology, the telephone, newspapers/books,radio and television/cinema. This produced much to analyse in terms of the impact of these singularly as well as the interaction between them and the impact of structure and content within and between each. The long-running argument about whether watching television could cause a person to copy what they see on TV and be part of an explanation for a violent act by an individual is an sample of our attempts to understand the influence of media ecologies on individual and society. The fact it is still a disputed area indicates how difficult this area of study is to gain a consensus.
Get Selina Ng’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The word ‘ecology’ is defined as ‘relations of organisms to one another and their physical surroundings’. Replace organisms with technologies and this is largely what most authors on the subject agree to be the description of media ecologies. The treatment of media technologies as having an inherent influence on people and culture as much as how technologies are used aligns with the Marshall McLuhan view of technology ‘ technologies don’t just occur by happenstance… We are responsible for our technologies..’.
Just as we shape our physical environmental ecology, McLuhan believes we need to understand and recognise the ‘effect of a medium then you can take steps to shape or restrict them’. There have been studies and analysis of the impact of television virtually since its inception and McLuhan was one of those who wrote about not just the content but the medium itself and the messages it sends in how it is structured and presented- ‘the medium is the message’ he proclaimed. He amongst others discussed the impact of the television sitting in the lounge room on family dynamics. This is echoed in the discussions of the influence of computers in the bedroom of children or in the living spaces of homes and impact on family life that were being had in the late 90s early 2000s. Now the discussions are about smartphones in the hands of most family members most of the time and the impact on family relationships this has. In terms of media ecologies, the relations between media in the home is a regular subject for social analysts as people interact with the television, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and each other with the television offering ways to interact with it via live Twitter feeds that run at the bottom of the screen.
