Explorations in Media Ecology - Volume 2, Issue 2, 2003

Despite a recent revival, Marshall McLuhan remains stranded on the theoretical margins of communication scholarship. Whether primarily because of his aphoristic and ambiguous writing or because of the immense difficulties posed by his thought for the study of communication, his peripheral status sidesteps around the important contributions he has made to understanding human discourse and interaction. In an effort to confront and reclaim McLuhan from the margins, this article considers the consequences of his thought for a subset of communication scholarship: the study of rhetoric. We contend that McLuhan’s work offers certain correctives to the conventional study of rhetoric that make possible a confluence of rhetorical criticism and media ecology, a convergence necessitated by the politics and ideologies of today’s changing media environment.

This article explores a fairly recent trend in cable programming: “drive-by programming.” In response to the proliferation of channels and the potential for channel surfing that has accompanied the narrowcasting of contemporary cable television, some networks have regularly employed a programming scheme that directly targets the roving viewer. Looking at MTV, TNT, and CNN, this article examines the ways in which this new programming scheme has impacted both programming choices and program content, including MTV’s movement to reality television and the repetitive story-telling practices of both TNT and CNN. These case studies demonstrate the consequences of drive-by programming for the contemporary media environment, illustrating the particularly detrimental effects of CNN’s drive-by practices on the kinds of news stories the network tells.

New advances in cognitive neuroscience that track visual messages through the brain indicate that media imagery stimulates intuitive, unconscious cognitive motivators that shape our perceptions of reality and directly guide our behavior. This cognitive synthesis does not distinguish between mediated and real imagery and the cognition and the motivated behavior occur before the rational mind receives the neural signal. Because of the rational bias of our educational system, most of us still approach media communication from an intuitively illiterate perspectives. But, in today’s visual culture, visually based, intuitive literacy has become a prerequisite to the successful negotiation of culture as an educated person. This article explores the theoretical foundations of intuitive, visual literacy and presents processes that educators can use to teach intuitive literacy so that students can better negotiate the world and guide their own behavior in ways that generate and sustain quality and integrity in their lives.

Vaidhyanathan, Siva. Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity. New York and London: NYU Press, 2001. 288 pp. Cloth $27.95, ISBN 0-814-78806-8. Paper $17.95, ISBN 0-814-78807-6.

Entell, Peter (Director). The Tube. (Prod. Peter Entell and Patrick Lauber. First Run/Icarus Films; West Glen Films, 2001. 82 min.

Genosko, Gary. McLuhan and Baudrillard: The Masters of Implosion. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. 160 pp. Paper $26.95, ISBN 0-415-19062-2.

Genosko, Gary. McLuhan and Baudrillard: The Masters of Implosion. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. 160 pp. Paper $26.95, ISBN 0-415-19062-2.

Levinson, Paul. Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. 240 pp. Cloth $29.95, ISBN 0-415-19251-X. Paper $16.95, ISBN 0-415-24991-0.

Lull, Jack. Daily News, Eternal Stories: The Mythological Role of Journalism. New York: Guilford, 2001. 245 pp. Cloth $38.00, ISBN 1-572-30608-4. Paper $18.95, ISBN 1-572-30606-8.

Wilson, David Sloan. Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. 268 pp. Cloth $25.00, ISBN 0-226-90134-3. Paper $14.00, ISBN 0-226-90135-1.

Zingrone, Frank. The Media Symplex: At the Edge of Meaning in the Age of Chaos. Cresskill, NJ: 2003. 268 pp. Cloth $24.95, ISBN 1-57273-559-7.