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- Volume 22, Issue 3, 2023
Explorations in Media Ecology - Volume 22, Issue 3, 2023
Volume 22, Issue 3, 2023
- Editorial
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Finding something interesting
More LessThis editorial reflects on the 2023 Media Ecology Association Convention in New York and points out areas of common ground between the convention and this issue of the journal.
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- Articles
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Finding Ong’s way through: Walter Ong’s method for media ecology
By Paul SoukupThis Keynote address from the 23rd annual convention of the Media Ecology Association in Rio de Janeiro marked the presentation of The Walter J. Ong Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship. The address explores how Ong approached his own scholarship and how that scholarship offers a method for media ecology research. Rather than to propose a system, Ong instead suggests a method to find one’s way through problems of communication and knowledge.
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Enactive approach to social interactions in religious media ecologies
Authors: Mariano Navarro and Mindaugas BriedisIn this article we examine the role of the body in constituting specific social interactions via religious media ecologies from the perspective of the enactive embodied cognition. Religious media ecologies give affordances for conversation and interaction which amplify not only religious but also social beliefs and turn subjective judgements into an intersubjective reality. Hence, despite the traditional emphasis on rational, verbal forms of social interaction, we consider the human body to be something of a cognitive pattern or map, representing important social senses and relations. Thematizing the proximity between embodied cognition and religious media ecologies can bring together philosophy and sociology, while addressing a range of prominent thinkers in an original way.
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‘I am big. It’s the pictures that got small’: A look at Sunset Boulevard through Marshall McLuhan’s theory of hot and cool media and personalities
More LessBilly Wilder’s 1950 movie Sunset Boulevard has been widely analysed as a portrayal of the demise of Hollywood’s traditional values with the introduction of modern technology. This article revisits the iconic film in a new light to uncover a relationship between its plot and characters and Marshall McLuhan’s theory of hot and cool media. In the transition period after silent movies’ displacement by talking pictures, two characters get involved in an unsettling story about Old Hollywood, obsession and obsolescence. Their contrasting personalities, heavily influenced by the different environments they come from, can be seen as examples of the hot and cool personalities described by McLuhan in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. This article demonstrates how analysing classic films in the context of media ecology theories can help us uncover a deeper meaning behind traditional plots and character archetypes.
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Towards a critical media ecology: Gender and media ecology
More LessAs a purposefully enacted form of praxis, this article represents a feminist methodological approach guided by the author’s personal introduction into choice works of feminist scholarship. By employing feminist epistemologies, this article demonstrates that each of our realities of understanding is made possible by our own differing subjective situations and our resonance towards difference. Throughout the piece, multiple parallel philosophical and ontological orientations are suggested in efforts to theoretically connect a broad array of feminist theories and praxis with canonic tenants of media ecology (such as language play, creation of counter-environments and breakdowns as breakthroughs). Written prior to the ‘Gender and Media Ecology’ invited Special Issue of EME, Dr. bird provides their own survey of ‘Gender and Media Ecology’, suggesting foundational means of future critical pursuits. The ultimate aim of this work is to invite future, even more expansive critical media ecological scholarship to continue similar efforts, which would provide even more holistically intersectional and invaluable means of challenging taken-for-granted institutional and societal norms inside the field of media ecology and beyond.
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YouTube and the restructuring of play: A media (auto)poetics of toy unboxing videos
By Brian L. OttToy unboxing videos are a popular and lucrative form of children’s entertainment on YouTube. This essay undertakes a media (auto)poetics of these videos and their relationship to children’s play through an integrated analysis of technology (media ecology), text (rhetorical criticism) and participant experience (autoethnography). Based on this analysis, I argue that toy unboxing videos foster and promote a form of ‘play as advertising’ via three key structural features: (1) repetition of the interest-excitement affect, (2) object fetishization and (3) direct address. In a concluding section of the essay, I reflect on the implications of the preceding analysis for digital media criticism, online advertising and children’s play.
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- Pedagogy
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Magic in advertising: Key themes for analysis
More LessThis article identifies a variety of magical motifs that appear in ads and that consequently shape the popular practices of consumerism. In this context, magic refers to visual and textual content that suggest the world is suffused with supernatural forces and agencies. The author briefly discusses some basic approaches to the study of magic in advertising, proceeds to identify the range of magical themes that reliably appear in ads, and discusses an assignment that can be used to guide students towards a deeper understanding of this key aspect of consumerism.
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- Probes
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Strike and tangle: Crowd control in the digital media environment
By R. L. BinceTo better understand crowds and crowd control practices in the digital media environment, this article briefly probes two institutions that practice ‘crowd control’ online: a cybersecurity company called CrowdStrike and a social media analytics service called CrowdTangle. These two firms continue the discourses of crowd theory in the traditions of criminologist Scipio Sighele and crowd psychologist Gustave Le Bon, adjusted for the new affordances of digital technology. The digital media environment affords infrastructure for forensically individualizing and influencing mass behaviour in the styles of Foucauldian and Deleuzian discipline, control and ‘moulding’. The probe concludes by emphasizing the political stakes of increasingly sophisticated crowd control infrastructures made possible through digital media environments.
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- Poetry
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From ‘Copy Left’
More LessIn the spirit of Dada and/or Fluxus, these works of visual poetry (vispo) explore the relationship between language and meaning, figures and grounds, highlighting the materiality of letters and ways of seeing.
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- Book Review
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Story and Structure: A Complete Guide, Leon Conrad (2022)
More LessReview of: Story and Structure: A Complete Guide, Leon Conrad (2022)
Glastonbury: The Squeeze Press, 528 pp.,
ISBN 978-0-95563-913-5, h/bk, $50.00
ISBN 978-1-90606-925-4, p/bk, $38.99
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Volumes & issues
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Volume 23 (2024)
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Volume 22 (2023)
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Volume 21 (2022)
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Volume 20 (2021)
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Volume 19 (2020)
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Volume 18 (2019)
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Volume 17 (2018)
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Volume 16 (2017)
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Volume 15 (2016)
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Volume 14 (2015)
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Volume 13 (2014)
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Volume 12 (2013)
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Volume 11 (2012)
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Volume 10 (2011)
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Volume 9 (2010)
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Volume 8 (2009)
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Volume 7 (2008)
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Volume 6 (2007)
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Volume 5 (2006)
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Volume 4 (2005)
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Volume 3 (2004)
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Volume 2 (2003)
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Volume 1 (2002)