MEA @ ICA 2026
The 76th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association will take place this year in Cape Town, South Africa from June 4–8.
This year’s theme is “Communication and Inequalities in Context.”
Since the MEA is an Association Organization of the ICA, we are granted a panel as part of the program. The following is our program for this year.
Media Ecology as a Context for Examining and Reducing Inequalities
Chair: Thom Gencarelli, Manhattan University, USA
Papers
Eva Berger , College of Management Academic Studies, Israel
“Activating the Remix: The Prompt as Creative Spark in the Age of AI”
In the age of large language and image models, the prompt has become the central interface in a new media ecology where prompting initiates a process of conversion, translating verbal intention into visual or auditory form.
Drawing on McLuhan’s idea of media as translation and Lance Strate’s distinctions between words, images, and numbers, this paper explores how prompting transforms translation into remix. When words are translated into images, or sounds into text, something is always lost: nuance, metaphor, and abstraction resist conversion. Trained on the vast catalogue of human expression, large language and image models do not simply translate – they recompose, drawing fragments from countless prior texts, sounds, and images into new constellations.
In this evolving ecology, the prompt functions as both creative spark and connective tissue. When what we produce is generated through the recombination of existing materials, authorship requires redefinition. Prompting to activate the remix that draws from the shared archive of human expression demands new ways of understanding creative agency.
Peggy Cassidy, Adelphi University, USA
“Chalk and Talk: Exploring a Thermostatic Approach to Education in the Age of AI”
In 1979, Neil Postman ended his book Teaching as a Conserving Activity with a call for a “thermostatic” approach to education. He argued that schools should seek to balance whatever is out of balance in the media environment. Rather than embracing new media, he argued that schools should provide children with the counterargument to the culture’s dominant media. Many people are currently – most of them without knowing it – making this argument about AI in education. As teachers try to respond to the widespread use of AI by students in ways that make many traditional types of schoolwork more or less obsolete or invalid, one response has been to revive older methods: more tests that students take with pencil and paper, sending students up to the blackboard to work on problems, even oral exams. This paper will explore what a “thermostatic” approach to AI in education might look like.
Thom Gencarelli, Manhattan University, USA
“Neil Postman was Wrong, Once: Amusing Ourselves to Death and Both/and Thinking”
In the introductory chapter to his most well-known and widely-read book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman invokes the 20th Century’s two most important and influential novels about the possible dystopias with which humanity is faced: George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. He does so to argue – in a book that was first published in 1985 – that Orwell’s vision did not come to be, but that Huxley’s did: that people had come to love the means by which they are oppressed and controlled. Of course, at the time, the Internet was still a decade away and social media almost two decades away. Thus both were developments Postman could not possibly have foreseen, understood, and taken into account.
This paper argues that both the Orwellian and Huxleyian visions have come to be, but in a way in which the two are fused together as one.
Pedro Gil González, Universidad Panamericana, México
Ricardo Meneses Trujillo, Universidad Panamericana, México
“Media Ecology and the New Digital Aristocracy”
While communication is often celebrated as a force for democratization and inclusion, this paper argues that it can also amplify social inequalities. Drawing on media ecology, political philosophy, and communication theory, this study examines how digital media environments redistribute power, attention, and participation in ways that reinforce existing hierarchies. Technological access, algorithmic amplification, and disparities in media literacy create a new digital aristocracy – a system in which visibility and voice are unevenly allocated. The paper explores how algorithms privilege dominant languages, emotional content, and commercially valuable users, while marginalizing those lacking resources or technical expertise. These dynamics produce not only economic and informational divides but also symbolic inequalities, as media representations shape cultural legitimacy and self-perception. The study contends that inequality in communication is not merely a technical or economic problem but an ethical one: it limits human flourishing by excluding individuals from meaningful participation in the shared pursuit of truth. The paper concludes by proposing a framework for virtuous communication ecologies – systems designed to balance attention, inclusion, and authenticity in the digital age.
Lance Strate, Fordham University, USA
“Attention vs. Content: Postman’s Dichotomy and Our Contemporary Digital Dilemma”
In his 1979 book, Teaching as a Conserving Activity, Neil Postman argues that schools do not just develop and implement curriculums, but as an institution constitute a curriculum in their own right. He also argues that media of communication in general, and television specifically, also represent a kind of curriculum, and that the television curriculum is in many ways diametrically opposed to that of the school. First and foremost, he characterized schools as content-centered, and television as attention-centered. In this way, Postman anticipates later concerns about electronic media such as the internet, the web, social media, mobile devices, and their apps. Applying the media ecology approach, Postman’s critique is based on understanding the school as a medium in its own right, one that is closely connected to writing and printing. The contrast between print media and electronic media can be extended to our contemporary digital media, and allows for a deepening understanding of our contemporary dilemma and ways to address it.
Laura Trujillo Liñan, Universidad Panamericana, México
“The Paradox of Progress: How Linguistic Evolution Deepens Communicative Inequalities”
In an era marked by unprecedented technological and communicative progress, language continues to evolve at a pace never seen before. New media, digital platforms, and algorithmic environments have expanded the possibilities of expression and participation across cultures and social groups. Yet, this linguistic evolution does not necessarily translate into a parallel evolution in equality. On the contrary, while the tools and channels of communication multiply, the distance between social groups often widens.
This paper examines the paradox that, as our linguistic and communicative capacities become more sophisticated, the discourses that dominate public spaces tend to reinforce polarization, exclusion, and radical positions. Rather than fostering openness and understanding, communicative abundance seems to amplify social fragmentation. Through a media ecology perspective, this research explores how linguistic evolution – accelerated by digital technologies and shaped by algorithmic mediation – both reflects and reproduces existing inequalities.
The study argues that communication, instead of functioning as a bridge, increasingly becomes a mechanism of distinction, where language itself operates as a marker of identity and power. Understanding this paradox is essential for rethinking the ethical and educational foundations of communication in the 21st century – a time when speaking more does not necessarily mean understanding better.