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Explorations in Media Ecology - Volume 19, Issue 2, 2020

Volume 19, Issue 2

Volume 19, Issue 2, 2020

Language: English
  • Articles

      • Mass media in the mobile village

        https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00031_1

        As a constantly connected environment via the Internet and mobile technology, the mobile village reconstructed the means by which content reaches a mass audience. To successfully navigate this environment, audiences must adjust to the new dynamics imposed by mobile technologies. This article examines mass media technologies and practices in an attempt to assess the practical impact of the mobile village within the production, distribution and consumption of media and information. Journalism is now judged less by the news it provides than by the process by which it is produced. Many proclaim the death of radio as traditional broadcast formats become antiquated, however, thanks to increased hardware mobility and bandwidth speeds, podcasts and music streaming services continue to draw listeners. Lastly, television, long a medium fixed in domestic space and oriented around synchronous mass consumption, now streams on demand to mobile devices via wireless Internet connections.

    • Nostalgia, lost connections and the ‘Sudden Unified Self’

      https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00032_1

      The study of nostalgia has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, spanning a wide variety of disciplines. As previous scholars have suggested, nostalgia permeates our communicative environment. Ironically, from a communicative perspective, clear definitions of ‘nostalgia’ can be elusive. For the purposes of Media Ecology, a helpful definition of nostalgia concerns lost connections: relationships with other beings, not artefacts, form the communicative environment of nostalgia. When the relationships are presumed to be with objects – as is often the case – nostalgia can induce playful responses to pain, but also can problematize expressions of collective memory and out-group identities. This article surveys implications of ‘lost connections’ for Media Ecology.

    • Managers’ literacy and orality: How suited to the document-driven workplace?

      https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00033_1

      For more than 50 years, scholars of managerial behaviour have described the oral more than print-oriented character of managers’ everyday worlds. Managers engage in almost incessant interpersonal interaction, seeking out oral communication with others and neglecting or mistrusting print sources of information. However, recently a revolution in workplace processes and communication has been occurring with the emergence of digitized, Internet-enabled texts throughout globalized enterprise, which are strongly influencing workplace practices. Managers rely heavily on oral modalities to do their work but increasingly they are expected to read and understand complex organizational texts, then from these sources, solve problems and make decisions. Using an assessment of managers’ literacy, this paper explores the implications for managers’ literate and oral performance at work, along with their ability to cope with the demands of the emerging document-driven workplace.

    • as a cognitive map: Simplifying and focusing movement in postmodern urban spaces

      https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00034_1

      The location-based, augmented reality video game has been an unprecedented phenomenon in the short history of mobile smartphone applications. In this article, I argue that the remarkable success of derives from its cognitive mapping qualities within postmodern, hyper-mediated environments. By focusing and filtering the vast information associated with navigating postmodern spaces, provides individuals with greater clarity by defining the subject’s social identity in relationship to the physical environment. In particular, the game recentres the fragmented subject’s disorienting experiences associated with postmodern cultures immersed in digital information. Via its integration of location-based gaming, rudimentary augmented reality, simple mobile game design and collaborative local community-based game-play, allows the individual to about the complex urban environment with great confidence, purpose and clarity – the search for Pokémon frames the player’s objectives and attention (literally via the smartphone screen). Drawing upon the media ecology tradition, the contemporary world-view or media logic of ubiquitous digital media is dominated by quantification, clear game-like rules, and the ‘productive’ collection and management of information.

  • Poetry

      • ‘Cell Division’ and ‘O Positive’

        https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00035_1

        ‘Cell Division’: This poem is on process, on as a human endeavour. Wrapped in terminology, language embodies placement where the body wants to land. As language creatures, humans attempt definition without including sensory episodes of navigation, cognitive disassociations of tripped-up aural sensation, i.e. what feels good, i.e. fun. The function of the imagination in language is to question its continual evolution – to grow the 'not-here' from the Self. With purposeful misspellings of text-speak, for , and asking the reader to pronounce with extra s – the writer interlays mouth with media to reach past the moment of the poem, past the page, to the reader's eyes, skin and body lingo, to share in the process. Titled ‘Cell Division’, as tendrils of our collective unsettling, this poem looks at choice and mobility as concurrent quadrants in the act of .

        ‘O Positive’: As the unfolding of each moment presents itself, the question becomes, how much to hold onto what passes by? This poem, in its restraint and jangled incompletion, uses rhythm and meter inside the sentence form, to look at how communication travels inside the syntax of grammar. The sound of the breath as it moves through the lines, connects to the human flow referenced in the title – which then connects to the ending neologism , itself, a landing spot without origin.

  • Pedagogy

      • Doing the write thing: Teaching public relations writing through philosophy of communication and media ecology

        https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00038_1

        This article approaches the reflection on excellence in writing both philosophically and practically, through philosophy of communication and media ecology. It argues that the way to excellence in writing is through, first, learning and acquiring knowledge about the art and forms of good writing and appropriate media. The next stage is to perform the act of writing using appropriate forms and channels of dissemination. If done wisely, with care and reflection, the understanding and use of theoria and praxis can result in producing excellence in writing, or poiesis. Philosophical reflection on theoria, praxis, and poiesis, thus, enables one to understand a deeper sense of the why and how of the art and craft of writing. The specific form of writing considered in this article is public relations writing in a classroom setting; however, understanding the philosophical and media ecological underpinnings of rhetoric can also be useful in other forms of writing and communication.

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