Media ecology is neither new nor original to this person. It's a well established approach to media and communication studies founded on the work of McLuhan, Postman, Ong and others, with its own association, listserv, journals, publications, and conferences. See http://www.media-ecology.org/ .....Alex Alex Kuskis PhD e-Scholars.ca Adjunct Professor of Communication Gonzaga University ----- Original Message ----- From: "Denise N. Rall" <denrall@yahoo.com> To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2006 5:47 PM Subject: Re: [Air-l] conceptual lexicon
Dear AIR-ers -
A great discussion going here. I just came from the Georgina Born (Emmanuel College, Cambridge University) Masterclass at the Cultural Research Network, University of Queensland. She has other dates to follow in Australia. I highly recommend looking into the CRN, lots of stuff going on there.
She uses the term media ecologies to describe her work with the BBC. That reminded me of information ecologies as offered by Bonnie Nardi et al.
I am an ICT agnostic. I don't use it, but it doesn't bother me when others use it. In my thesis I use networked technologies. Wimpy, but at least it's not another acronym. But I wasn't too happy with media ecologies. Yes, they grow, but ecology is actually means the STUDY of ecologies. Not the systems themselves although that distinction has faded in the common parlance.
As I thought about it, I was happier with media ecosystems. The systemic can address issues of infrastructure, political economies, and information in a way that I think the term media ecology does not. Ok, cheers,
Denise Denise N. Rall, PhD thesis in revision, School of Environ. Science, Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Tuesdays: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 or Mobile 0427 245 497 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/rsm/staff/pages/drall/index.html Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html