Explorations in Media Ecology - Volume 24, Issue 4, 2025

This article reframes the practice of purdah as a gendered medium of communication, analyzing how its material forms; from architectural curtains to bodily veils, filter women’s visibility and structure social power. Moving beyond binaries of oppression and tradition, it employs a feminist media ecology lens to argue that purdah operates as a dynamic interface where control is both enforced and negotiated. A comparative thematic analysis of early twentieth-century life writing (Sunity Devee, Zarina Bhatty, Rokeya S. Hossain) and contemporary Indian cinema (Lipstick under My Burkha, Thappad) reveals a central tension: while purdah’s materiality disciplines the female body and segregates space, it simultaneously creates the conditions for its own subversion. The study finds that narrative genre fundamentally shapes the representation of this agency; textual memoirs articulate resistance through introspective reflection, while films externalize it through embodied performance and the reclamation of domestic geography. Ultimately, the analysis contributes to feminist media studies by demonstrating how purdah functions not as a static cultural artifact, but as an active, communicative system that mediates social reality across historical periods and narrative forms.

Marshall McLuhan’s root metaphor, media as extensions of humans, although not the only metaphor for media in his corpus, has dominated our theoretical imagination for a long time. Without denying its serviceability, this article ventures beyond McLuhan’s arch-metaphor to explore other ‘radical’ ways of understanding media. Each entry, if it generates enough dialogue, has the potential to evolve into a speculative project in its own right.

This probe examines how sports betting and trading apps step in as cultural substitutes for wage labour in an economy defined by stagnant pay and rising precarity. Using a media ecology lens, I introduce ‘predatory persuasion’ – a term for how platforms exploit instability by framing risk as freedom and speculation as empowerment. Innis’s idea of space-biased media and Postman’s reminder that technologies reshape culture provide the foundation: these apps thrive on speed, immediacy and disposability, embedding speculative logics into daily routines. Comparing DraftKings, FanDuel, Robinhood and E*TRADE shows how gamified design, instant feedback loops and narratives of skill normalize risky practices while masking systemic disadvantages. A brief discourse analysis of promotional campaigns reveals how speculation is packaged as safe, communal and rational. I argue that predatory persuasion does more than sell participation – it reorganizes the environment of leisure and labour itself, deepening financialization and redefining survival around risk.

Review of: Crises Then as Now: Marshall Mcluhan, with Urbanist Jaqueline Tyrwhitt and Artist György Kepes, Jaqueline Mcleod Rogers, Ellen Shoshkes and Charissa N. Terranova (2025)

New York: Peter Lang, 174 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-43319-781-9, p/bk, USD 40.95

ISBN 978-1-43319-782-6, h/bk, USD 114.95

ISBN 978-1-43319-784-0, e-book, USD 40.95

Review of: The Crisis of Narration, Byung-Chul Han (2024)

Cambridge: Polity Press, 76 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-50956-043-1, p/bk, USD 16.95

Review of: The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism, Jathan Sadowski (2025)

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 293 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-52039-807-8, p/bk, USD 23.70

ISBN 978-0-52039-807-8, h/bk, USD 83.60

ISBN 978-0-52039-808-5, e-book, USD 16.99