Ecological Analysis

Question 1

a branch of biology; deals with relationship between living organisms and their environment

Answer 1

Ecology

Question 2

• Formally introduced the term media ecology in 1968
• Teaching as a Subversive Activity book (apple blowing up//danger of teaching and how that can radically change one’s perception of the world)
• Not inventing it but naming it
• Looks into the matter of how media of communication affects human perception, understanding, feeling, and value; how interaction with

Answer 2

Neil Postman

Question 3

complex message system which imposes on human beings certain ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving

Answer 3

Environment

Question 4

specifications are more often implicit and informal; half concealed by our assumption that what we are dealing with is not an environment but merely a machine

Answer 4

Media environments (books, radio, film, tv)

Question 5

• Call our attention to see how integrated we are into the environment
• What roles media force us to play…

Answer 5

Media ecology tries to make these specifications explicit.

Question 6

What is a major implication of media ecology?

Answer 6

• Our lived reality cannot be experienced separately from or outside of media
• It is so pervasive, one cannot separate themselves from it
• i.e. the watch as media, no track of time

i.e. The Truman Show – living in a constructed world and gets out
• Christof – we accept reality as what is given to us; it captures us
• Our fully mediated existence but escape is impossible

We live in media; rather than with media

Question 7

• Literature theorist
• Believed that symbolic actions can produce the same effect as material ones
o i.e. reading of a book on the attaining of success is in itself the symbolic attaining of that success

Answer 7

Equipment for Living – Kenneth Burke

Question 8

_________ are multiple and therefore there will always be conflicts among _______

Answer 8

Hierarchy

Question 9

______ is impossible to avoid, as it arises each time we break a hierarchy

Answer 9

Guilt

Question 10

Ways of Resolving Guilt

Answer 10

Transcendence – appeal to new hierarchy in which the two conflicting hierarchies cease to be in opposition (i.e. flipping a coin to decide what to do to resolve the guilt)
Mortification – symbolic act of atonement, such as confession or self-sacrifice
Victimage – form of scapegoating in which guilty party transfers guilt onto another party a character in a novel, film, tv show, or other media form can serve as a surrogate for our guilt

Question 11

ppeal to new hierarchy in which the two conflicting hierarchies cease to be in opposition (i.e. flipping a coin to decide what to do to resolve the guilt)

Answer 11

Transcendence

Question 12

symbolic act of atonement, such as confession or self-sacrifice

Answer 12

Mortification

Question 13

form of scapegoating in which guilty party transfers guilt onto another party a character in a novel, film, tv show, or other media form can serve as a surrogate for our guilt

Answer 13

Victimage

Question 14

Two archetypal symbolic forms provide equipment for living and help resolve guilt:

Answer 14

• Tragedy - an event causing great suffering
• Comedy – humane way of resolving guilt, tolerant reinstatement of the fool in society rather than tragic punishment of his or herself

Question 15

Societies face social problems unique to their particular historical moment and therefore develop media forms to address and work through them

Answer 15

• i.e. the Cold War in 1950s - Duck and cover drills to provide protection from the atomic bomb
• how do you work through the anxiety

i.e. Weapons of Science Ready
• doxa
• paranoia, lack of trust in that culture
• give them tools for living
• working out of those anxieties of the time during the Cold War

The Hunger Games
• why we like to go to movies
• vicarious

Question 16

each medium of communication has relatively fixed characteristics that influence communication in a particular manner

Answer 16

Medium theory

Question 17

“We make our tools, and then our tools make us.”

Answer 17

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964)
• TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM – someone created twitter, we act like twitter
• any technology that extend the human sense can be considered media
• media inevitably transforms (mediates) the way that sensory actions are performed in society
- i.e. Ritalin is a form of media b/c it changes our senses
- significance is NOT the content transmitted but what it does to us

Question 18

“The medium is the Message.”

Answer 18

• Real meaning of a medium is its capacity to transform human minds and human affairs
• i.e. lightbulb as a form of media

Question 19

The Internet and World Wide Web

Answer 19

• The real message of the internet and WW is their capacity to extend human sight, speech, and memory to an unprecedented degree
• These capacities are what make the internet and WWW a media technology not just b/c you can send messages and read the news online

Question 20

Is the WWW hot or cool?

Answer 20

• McLuhan evaluated different forms of media according to a metaphorical understanding of their interactive “temperature”
• HOT – high definition, fully engages the senses = radio, cinema, video games (immersive, absorbed into that image, all senses taken into the medium
• COOL – low-definition, little given and much has to be filled in by listener/viewer = television and telephone

Question 21

Increasing connectivity was giving rise to a re-tribalization of human society and engendering heightened anxiety and conflict

Answer 21

The Global Village

Question 22

durable media such as clay, parchment, and stone; decentralized hierarchal cultures

Answer 22

Time-biased (Harold Innis)

Question 23

light and ephemeral media such as TV and the Internet; centralized, egalitarian cultures

Answer 23

Space-biased (Harold Innis)

Innis believed that time-biased and space-biased media need to be in balance for civilization to flourish
• The more technical we get, the easier it is to collapse
• Giving up time-biased media

Question 24

essentially a conservative society (someone with knowledge, keep going back to them for the knowledge b/c you can’t write it down)

Answer 24

Orality

• Primary orality – orality of cultures with no knowledge at all of writing
• Secondary orality – of radio, tv, and film; it grows out of high-literacy cultures and depends on a wide-spread cultivation of writing and reading for its invention

Question 25

technology whose message is linear, sequential, and strictly controlled

Answer 25

Hot medium

Question 26

technology whose message favours participation and is multi-vocal and open ended

Answer 26

Cool medium

Question 27

•	Freezes words into objects
•	Generated analytic processes
•	Originally seen as an intrusion into the life world as something foreign
•	For Plato, writing was problematic
o	Inhuman
o	Unresponsive
o	Destroys memory, rely on external source
o	Can’t talk back, passive

Answer 27

Literacy

Question 28

1. Characteristics:
   a. Nonlinear/Decentered
   b. Dynamic/Indeterminate
   c. Collaborative/Interactive
   d. Image/Iconicity

    2. Logics/Consciousness:
        a. Associative/Spatial
        b. Provisional/Adaptable
        c. Prosumerly
        d. Decisiveness

Answer 28

Characteristics and Logics of Third Wave Media

Question 29

• Work is offloaded to us (professionals who did that work; the work is now ours)
• i.e. Expedia – used to call; now you have to now the requirements, shop around
• i.e. e-banking
• i.e. store – cashing yourself out; labour offloaded to you; dyi

Answer 29

Prosumer = Producer + Consumer

Question 30

In sum, media ecology is about seeing the big picture:
About understanding the ways that media help us live our lives.
Understanding how media shape our lives by influencing how we make sense of our social world.

Answer 30

Ecological Analysis