Silvan Tomkins as media ecologist

Taking as its starting point Christine Nystrom’s definition of media ecology as the study of the interactions between communications media, technologies, techniques and processes, and human thought, feeling, value and behaviour, this article argues that media ecologists have inadequately developed the field’s consideration of the phenomenon we understand as ‘feeling’. With this in mind, I maintain that the affect-script theory of the personality theorist Silvan Tomkins has much to contribute to the media ecology perspective, not only in bringing to bear a nuanced understanding of emotional phenomena, but in what Tomkins’ ideas might contribute to our understanding of focal areas of media ecological concern, such as literacy, the accelerated rate of technological change and forms of violence.