Journal of Environmental Media - Current Issue

This introduction to ‘Care-ful convening: Towards low carbon and inclusive knowledge sharing' outlines our hopes for this special issue, and introduces readers to a collection of authors who are expanding practices of convening with and through media. ‘Care, with and against’ (a phrase borrowed from M. Murphy) orients us towards ethical engagements amidst complex human and more-than-human entanglements. In contexts marked by unjust, carbon-intensive petrocultures, political violence and precarity, infrastructures of collective rejuvenation are essential. Towards that end, this introduction reflects on our ambitions to figure out how to think, communicate, and act differently in order to generate post-carbon, inclusive and multimodal approaches to convening. Through collaborative media projects and embodied conversations, we explore how extending care to ourselves, each other, and the planet can reshape the ways we gather, conduct research and form relationships.

In this commentary, Collectif non-établi explores alternatives to standardized forms of scientific exchanges as we now them – namely large urban congresses or virtual conferences.

In this article, the authors share their experiences of two documentary co-creation projects, the First Peoples’ Post-Secondary Storytelling Exchange and Circle Visions, media initiatives for Indigenous college students and emerging filmmakers, which took place in two post-secondary institutions in what is today called Québec, Canada. The authors frame their reflections historically as well as through the lens of Indigenous sovereignty to consider their projects’ relationships to ongoing Indigenous resistance. The article moves between personal recollections of the projects and the care-full, relational methodologies, processes, outcomes and priorities of co-creative approaches to decolonizing pedagogy and filmmaking. Despite challenges posed by the institutional colonial apparatus, the authors identify opportunities for Indigenous creatives to express themselves in culturally relevant ways, while enacting meaningful change upon the academic contexts within which media mentorship and filmmaking take place. Prioritizing care and generosity over extraction and control, these initiatives offer generative pathways for creation, storytelling and stewardship for planetary well-being.

In this commentary, Ariana Zilliacus describes how an audiowalk along a peninsula in Copenhagen convenes humans with a landscape’s stories – past, present and future.

This article focuses on a hybrid experimental practice called the Walkshop, developed during the COVID-19 lockdown and presented in two iterations, both in 2020, at the Walking Congress in Guimarães and the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial. In this experiment, geographically distant participants were virtually paired to guide one another synchronously through unfamiliar landscapes using geolocation tools and dialogic exchange. The Walkshop foregrounds a double dynamic: the reactivation of sensory presence through physical movement and the humanization of technology through shared embodied experiences. Drawing on philosophical, anthropological and phenomenological frameworks – Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Le Breton – the Walkshop positions walking not merely as locomotion but also as spacing – an embodied process of producing space through sensory engagement and movement. This walking experiment demonstrates how digital tools – seen as disembodying – can instead foster proximity, poetic dialogue and collective creativity. Participant feedback reveals heightened environmental awareness, personal transformation and profound human connection. The Walkshop provided an opportunity to observe first hand the benefits of walking, while exploring the potential of technology to support a hybrid physical–virtual experiment.

Online conferencing, while better for the environment than meeting in person, has a footprint due to the energy use of devices, networks and servers. In this commentary, Laura Marks offers tips for small-file conferencing.

This article examines the role of women activists in Chilean sacrifice zones, focusing on their resistance strategies and digital media narratives. The study addresses a critical gap in environmental justice research by exploring the intersection of gender, care ethics and biopolitics in the context of socio-environmental struggles. While previous studies have analysed the impacts of industrial pollution in these regions, little attention has been given to the feminist methodologies and digital activism employed by local women. The research uses a qualitative approach through digital ethnography and discourse analysis, examining online narratives produced by Mujeres de Zonas de Sacrificio en Resistencia (MUZOSARE). Social media content and press articles were analysed to understand how these activists construct and communicate resistance and care. Findings reveal that MUZOSARE members develop an ethic of care that extends beyond the domestic sphere, framing their activism as a collective responsibility for environmental and community well-being. Their digital activism challenges dominant media narratives, increases visibility and fosters transnational solidarity. However, tensions between activist and mainstream representations highlight ongoing struggles for legitimacy. This study contributes to feminist political ecology and environmental justice by demonstrating how digital media serves as a crucial space for contesting necropolitical governance in sacrifice zones.

In this interview, Katie Anania shares an eco-media activity of sketching inside a food forest and shows how engaging with paper can increase understanding of justice, environment and data politics.

In this commentary, Sarah Comyn and Katherine Fama creatively represent the community-engaged regreening of a Dublin neighbourhood using seeded recycled paper printed with images of local plants.

This article analyses how the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative used digital art as a coalitional praxis of care activism during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a moment marked by uncertainty, Justseeds responded by curating a series of five digital ‘care package’ portfolios, circulated primarily through social media, that offered visual narratives addressing mutual aid, housing justice, abolition, environmental health and essential labour. Drawing from adrienne maree brown’s framework of emergent strategy, Gloria Anzaldúa’s theorization of nepantla and the feminist geographies of care, this study situates these digital interventions as part of a broader project of radical care and collective resistance. Combining multimodal discourse analysis with Chicana feminist epistemology, the article examines how these care packages function as sites of coalitional care across digital and physical terrains. Themes such as interdependence, mutual aid and situated acts of care emerge through graphic representations that humanize marginalized labour, resist punitive carceral systems and reimagine housing as a site of relational justice. By mapping the relational and political aspects of care across these portfolios, the article argues that Justseeds artivism offers a model for how the boundaries of care can be stretched and expanded. Their digital artwork not only archives the crises of our time but also seeds futures of collective care and transformative justice.

This commentary describes Leila Armstrong’s ongoing work to visibilize data about human and more-than-human coexistence using various artistic modes, including comics, billboards and gallery displays.

This article uses the film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever as a springboard for examining and envisioning decolonial possibilities for the future. Rather than locating salvation or futurity in the myth of vibranium’s limitless extraction, this article turns towards the everyday, inventive agency found in African/Afrofuturist and Chicanx/Latin American artistic practices. Drawing from personal stories and experiences, it explores how the film’s spectacle prompted a reckoning with both the limitations and possibilities of corporate futurism. The article proposes the concept of ‘imperfect ecomedia’ – media-making that values immediacy, care and non-extractive resourcefulness over spectacle. Through analyses of Latinx Futurism, Afrofuturism and their intersections in performance art, cyberarte, the film Neptune Frost and African trash art, this article argues for ecofuturisms grounded in care and community. These practices, rooted in histories of dispossession and cultural hybridity, demonstrate how alternative, low-carbon and decolonial futures can be envisioned and enacted.

Review of: Living Surfaces: Images, Plants, and Environments of Media, Abelardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka (2024)

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 310 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-26254-795-6, p/bk, USD 45.00

ISBN 978-0-26237-847-5, e-book, USD 45.00