Media Ecology Flashcards
1
Q
What is media ecology?
A
- The study of media environment and its impact on human life
2
Q
What do media ecologists claim?
A
- Medium is not neutral
- Emphasizes different senses and each one encourages different habits of use
- Media environments are difficult to study b/c we live in them
3
Q
What does McLuhan express?
A
- Media technologies are powerful social forces
- Medium (form) is important to study than content
- Media technologies impact the organization of society, human behaviour, and perception
4
Q
Describe the four media epochs.
A
- Tribal
- Earliest, before letters and written language
- Oral communication, hearing is dominant sense
- Performance, rituals, songs, to pass along information - Literate
- Began with invention of phonetic alphabet
- Less reliance on human memory
- Sight increases in importance and competes with hearing - Print
- Started with invention of printing press
- Democratized access of information
- Sight reigns supreme as dominant sense
- Ushered modern period of human history, ideas, and knowledge building (Renaissance) - Electronic
- Invention of electronic communication (telegraph)
- Sight diminishes as dominant, hearing rises again
- Era of instant communication, conquered “space”
- Global village that unifies people
5
Q
What is Digital Age?
A
- An epoch not written by McLuhan, but based off his ideas
- Lead to growing number of electronic tribes and tribal warfare mentality
6
Q
What are critiques of media ecology?
A
- Overly deterministic
- Suggests people are passive victims of mass media
- Does not account for human agency (they choose to use technologies)
- Sparked the discussion on the active role of the people - Lack of empirical support
- Aren’t supported by empirical research - Hyperolic speculation
- McLuhan proclaimed “death” of literacy, but new media forms didn’t kill print
