Explorations in Media Ecology - Volume 21, Issue 1, 2022

Sometimes insights into the future, including possible dystopic futures, may be gleaned from examining dystopic pasts. Early European settlement in Aotearoa New Zealand, including the arrival of new diseases for which the people had no defences, created many dystopic outcomes for Māori. However, Māori realized how European technologies, including literacy, could be usefully adopted and adapted. By the early 1800s, probably more Māori were print literate in the Māori language than Pākehā (European New Zealanders) were literate in English. Different literacies, including sign and recitation, were employed within the intensely oral lives of Māori. While the exceptional memorization skills of pre-European Māori would gradually decline as conventional forms of literacy became embedded, a new synthesis of literacy and orality developed. Literacy did not prevent colonization’s dystopic outcomes, but it became a technology that Māori selectively modified and was influential in their retaining agency in creating their future.

Walter Ong emphasized two broad implications of literacy on mind, consciousness and interiority. I review some recent evidence for these conjectures by reference to my own research on children’s understanding of mind. I then go on to show how a theory of literate consciousness may help to explain the peculiar nature of Trump’s political rhetoric.

The internet has allowed the expansion of media presence in the most varied sectors of society. Institutions and religious groups from the most diverse backgrounds take ownership and use the available technological communication resources to optimize their activities and objectives. Considering the approach to gender studies and media ecology from the perspective of tetradic theory, I intend to analyse the Godllywood programme, created by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (IURD), which is defined as a movement that raises the banner of ‘Holiness to the Lord’ through the formation of a ‘virtuous woman’. Based on the continuous broadcasting of videos and other files through social networks such as Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, in addition to a blog hosted on the church’s website, we seek to understand how such religious groups, based on apparently outdated ideological discourses, propose the renewal of female minds and a change in behavior based on the precepts of the word of God. The women who make up the audience for the Godllywood channel are mentored by a principal mentor and the Big Sisters, all wives of church bishops. In addition to Brazil, the programme is now present in several countries in the Americas – including the United States – and other continents such as Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania. Based on the presentation of the programme and the challenges presented on the ‘Godllywood’ social networks, I intend to describe and analyse the discursive strategies used in these communication pieces.

Planning and policy leaders often rely on technical expertise and technological advancement to manage urban crises, privileging smart city developments that iron out the complex and contradictory textures of urban experience. Smart cities, as post-human cities, often abstract risk and crisis phenomena from the everyday contexts of communication in which they emerge and inform the historically situated identities of urban stakeholders. Smart city environments are, therefore, biased against the complexities and contradictions of urban media ecologies that create mosaics of experience and more dynamic responses to risk and crisis phenomena. It is found herein that the mosaic identities of urban stakeholders emerge in networks of communication and commerce that contrast the efficiencies of smart city systems and cultivate dialogically complex relations among publics dwelling in urban contexts.