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Explorations in Media Ecology - Volume 24, Issue 1, 2025

Volume 24, Issue 1

Volume 24, Issue 1, 2025

Language: English

    • Media ecology ethics: Dwelling on the horizons

      https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00231_1

      The shifting sands of ethics have implications for communication, namely how humans communicate ideas, how the technologies they use shape and enable the sharing of ideas, how the current information environment stifles or empowers ideas, etc. In the postmodern era, there is no one all-encompassing communication ethic, but myriad ethics in the plural sense. To move the conversation beyond situational ethics, this essay follows a relational approach, more precisely, an ecological approach. An ecological approach applies the interdisciplinary background of media ecology and the foundational tenet that the medium is the message to give an account of ethics, what Strate labelled . Media ecology has been defined as the study of media as environments. This definition and much of media ecology’s practice make it a pragmatic tool for studying many facets of communication, including ethics, which implies a sense of place. This sense is often lost due to technological innovation and media. Technologies and media erode individual choice and context, both of which are important in studying ethics. Media ecology ethics, as envisioned by Strate and expressed in this article, become a way of balancing and restoring a sense of place. Applying media ecology ethics as a response to the changes in modern media and the decentring of the postmodern moment is a call to scholars and laypersons alike. Human history is a testament to uncertainty and change. Media ecology ethics emphasizes the need to question, adapt and ultimately persevere amidst the changes in horizons.

    • Reactionary speech in the digital age

      https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00234_1

      It has been over thirty years since the publication of Albert Hirschman’s . Hirschman’s tripartite model – the perversity, futility and jeopardy theses – offers a powerful lens through which to read the historical corpus of conservative thought. Yet we must ask whether a new model of reactionary rhetoric is needed today, given the very different political atmosphere and media environment from the ones in which Hirschman originally formulated his argument. This article is premised on the view that we urgently require a new conception of reactionary rhetoric. It proposes a different analytical approach from Hirschman’s. First, it adopts a conception of conservatism as a reaction against democracy, a defence of the rich and powerful, and the preservation of hierarchy. Second, it makes a case for incorporating a media-ecological perspective to make sense of reactionary rhetoric. Synthesizing political theory with media ecology, this article proposes that if conservatism is an antidemocratic, antiegalitarian and counterrevolutionary movement, then two central and inevitable elements of conservative rhetoric are and . Conservative rhetoric, we propose, has both a negative and an affirmative dimension. The negative dimension consists of (1) the of social injustice, (2) the of a wildly exaggerated or completely fictitious enemy and (3) the of the relationship between the powerful and the victims of power. The affirmative dimension consists of (1) the of populist sentiment, (2) the of hierarchy and (3) the of social and political order.

  • Poetry

      • ‘This Page Is an Occupied Territory’

        https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00240_7

        Written by poet, performer, cultural critic Adeena Karasick, and visualized by vis lit pioneer Warren Lehrer, ‘This Page Is an Occupied Territory’ was composed in reaction to the ongoing occupation, war, slaughter in Gaza/Israel, and approaches the medium of language and the page itself as an occupied territory. ‘This Page’ investigates how, in many ways, nothing is pre and everything has always already been ‘occupied’. In much the same light, translation can be seen as a form of occupation, whereby one language layered onto the body of another can sometimes be an act of war. The word ‘war’, as both an English noun and a verb meaning ‘conflict’ and a German adjective (wàhr) meaning what is ‘true, real, genuine’, literally places ‘war’ at war with itself. To wit, ‘wà[h]r’ not only ‘occupies’ the homography between the ear and the eye; the babelism at play between speech and writing – but born in , madness and effacement, the notion of ‘occupation’ points to how what is ‘true’ is always in conflict, and thus graphically manifested here through layerings, invasions, a palimpsestic inter-linguality. Karasick presented a live performance of ‘This Page Is an Occupied Territory’ in February 2024 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Afterwards, she sent the text to Lehrer, whom she had collaborated with on the post-pandemic book (Lavender Ink, 2023). Almost immediately, the title and text of Karasick’s ‘Occupation’ poem suggested a visual setting that involved letterpress printing elements that could be used as blockades, barricades and border crossings. Lehrer worked with artist/printer Roni Gross who made prints of various wood and metal characters, blocks, dingbats and borders on letterpress proofing presses at the Center for Books in NYC and the Center for Editions at SUNY Purchase. Lehrer then made scans of the prints and visualized the poem digitally. As the poem progresses, the occupied pages become more and more boxed in, askew and rubbled to pieces. The resulting typographic landscapes combine text and image as one entity. The visualization of ‘This Page’ was inspired in part by the experimental typographer and partisan H. N. Werkman whose anti-Nazi publishing house led to his execution. An expanded version of this piece was printed as a tabloid-sized publication speaking to ways the ever-expanding war and daily bombardment of devastating news felt so outsized and overwhelming, in your face and hard to ‘handle’. This first edition of 700 copies was printed HP Indigo (digital offset) at the Newspaper Club in Glasgow, Scotland.

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