The Official Newsletter for the Media Ecology Association |
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THE TWENTY-THIRD ANNUA: CONVENTION OF THE MEDIA ECOLOGY ASSOCIATION
Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, BrazilJuly 7–10, 2022
“Dewey opens an important chapter in Experience and Nature with the seemingly preposterous claim that ‘of all things communication is the most wonderful.’ …The object, then, of recasting our studies of communication in terms of a ritual model is not only to more firmly grasp the essence of this ‘wonderful’ process but to give us a way in which to rebuild a model of and for communication of some restorative value in reshaping our common culture.” —James W. Carey, 1989
The Media Ecology Association (MEA) invites the submission of abstracts of papers and proposals for panels for presentation at its 23rd Annual Convention, which will be held from July 7-10, 2022 at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The deadline for submissions is December 20, 2021.
The annual meeting of the MEA provides an opportunity for our community of scholars, educators, professionals and practioners to exchange experiences and ideas in a friendly environment. Participants at MEA conventions address a wide diversity of topics in our programs, and we encourage submissions that explore media ecological approaches from any number of different disciplines and fields of knowledge and social practice. We are interested in papers, thematic panels, roundtable discussion panels, creative projects, performance sessions, and other proposals of interest to media ecologists.
While we are open to explorations on any topic of interest to media ecologists, we also include a convention theme with the aim of generating further discussion and probes involving multiple perspectives. Submissions do not have to address the theme, but are invited to do so.
The theme of the 2022 convention is Celebration. A long period of turmoil has seen social division, self-isolation and perpetual stress become our daily norm. Through various conflicts and trials, it has been the strength of our relationships and associations that have sustained us. Resilience is more than an individual trait. It is the product of self-care and mutual concern. The so-called “good life” includes our ability to individually and collectively endure great challenges, while reminding ourselves that joy must not be inhibited by the obstacles in our way. We continue to celebrate our accomplishments and our associations as an affirmative enterprise in making and remaking this human condition. The annual Media Ecology Association Convention helps our community mark these important milestones, celebrating our hard work and our commitment to one another. This is true in any year, but in particular in these times it is vital to raise up this sensibility and center it as a cause in our 2022 proceedings.
General topics of interest related to the convention theme (but not limited to):
Community Life Rituals of Celebration and Affirmation Technology as a Connecting Agent Art and the Expression of Joy Education and the Learning of Resilience Surviving the Maelstrom … and Thriving Positive Psychology and Media Ecology Science and Sanity: General Semantics
Guidelines for Submission
Please submit paper and panel proposals, in English, by December 20, 2021 to MEA2022Convention@gmail.com. A maximum of two submissions per author will be accepted. Authors who wish their papers to be considered for the Top Paper or Top Student Paper award must indicate this on their submission(s).
Submission Guidelines for paper and panel proposals:
Include title(s), abstract(s) (maximum 250 words), and contact information for each participant. Outline, as relevant, how your paper or panel will fit with the convention theme. Authors with papers submitted as part of a panel proposal or as a paper proposal that wish to be considered for Top Paper or Top Student Paper must send the completed paper to the convention planner by May 6, 2022.
Submission guidelines for manuscripts eligible for MEA award submissions:
Manuscripts should be 4,000–6,000 words (approximately 15 to 25 double-spaced pages) Include a cover page with your institutional affiliation and other contact information. Include an abstract (maximum 150 words).
Please visit https://media-ecology.org for more information about the Media Ecology Association, our annual convention, and our publication profile. |
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MEA Executive Board Election Results |
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Robert Albrecht, New Jersey City University, will be our new Vice President Elect |
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Bernadette Ann Bowen, Bowling Green State University, will be our new Recording Secretary |
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Rachel Armamentos, Fordham University, will continue to serve as our Newsletter Editor |
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Julia M. Hildebrand, Eckerd College, will continue in her role as Officer at Large |
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Thank you to Peggy Cassidy for serving as the MEA President this year |
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Thank you to Paolo Granata for serving as Immediate Past President this year |
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Thank you to Ashley Moore for serving as our Recording Secretary this year |
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Urban Communication Foundation Grant The Media Ecology Association invites proposals for a research grant in the amount of $2500 sponsored by the Urban Communication Foundation. Proposals should be grounded in a theoretical or philosophical approach associated with the field of media ecology and should address topics of media ecological concern regarding the study of cities and urban environments as they relate to human communication, social interaction, technological mediation, and cultural change and continuity. Proposals concerned with identity and affiliation in relation to race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and other differences that make a difference are encouraged.
Proposals will be evaluated via anonymous review, and in addition to the stipend, the author(s) will receive complimentary membership in the Media Ecology Association (including subscription to Explorations in Media Ecology) for the year of the award and registration at our annual convention. A program session at the annual convention will be devoted to the research study, and when completed, the study will be published in Explorations in Media Ecology (which would not preclude publication elsewhere). The competition will be open to graduate students registered for degree programs and who have been Media Ecology Association members for at least one year.
Additional Information
The application should be accompanied by 1) an abstract no longer than 100 words followed by 2) a one-page description of the proposed study. In addition, the application should be accompanied by 3) a faculty letter of support.
Applications for this year are open until February 1, 2022. Please send all application materials Lance Strate at strate@fordham.edu. |
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MEA @ ECA 2022
MEDIA ECOLOGY AFFILIATE GROUP
Philadelphia, PA
April 7-9, 2022
For additional information about the upcoming convention, please visit ECA’s website http://www.ecasite.org/. |
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MEA @ ICA 2022 The 72nd Annual ICA Conference theme One World, One Network‽ invites reimagining communication scholarship on globalization and networks. The use of the interrobang glyph - a superposition of the exclamation and question punctuation marks – seeks to simultaneously celebrate and problematize the “one-ness” in the theme.
At this year’s 72nd annual ICA conference, to be held in Paris, France on May 26–30, 2022 (theme: “One World, One Network‽”), the MEA is sponsoring the following panel:
Title: “Networking Our Way Toward a World of Sanity”
Chair: Thom Gencarelli, Manhattan College
- “All Things to All People: The Overlapping Boundaries of the Networked Self”
Margaret Cassidy, Adelphi University
In an age characterized by extensive use of social media for interaction among friends, family, coworkers, and total strangers, people are experiencing a complicated degree of overlapping and intertwining relationships and roles. The movement of many life activities online during the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this condition, as our homes became all places in one – home, office, fitness center, doctor’s office, therapist’s couch, house of worship – and it became difficult or impossible to keep those roles and those audiences separate from one another. The core thinkers and theories of media ecology provide an ideal lens through which to examine the challenges posed by the hyper-networked pandemic era. This paper will draw on such media ecology scholars as Erving Goffman, George Herbert Mead, Edward Hall, and Sherry Turkle to explore the challenges of managing overlapping identities.
- “Facebook, the Metaverse, and the Internet as Central Nervous System”
Thom Gencarelli, Manhattan College
On the day I sit to write this abstract, Facebook has just officially announced their plan to rebrand and rename the company – as, in the words of Mark Zuckerberg, “over the next several years, we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.” The obvious question from this becomes: “What is this thing Zuckerberg calls the metaverse?” Is it simply Facebook’s latest attempt to maintain its power and wealth as one of the most prominent companies on our venture/adventure toward Web 3.0? Is it a simply a ploy to regain control of the company’s narrative and the narrative about the company after so much scandal? Is it the vision of a majority and controller shareholder who is himself asocial? Or is it, in virtual terms, something real?
At a conference that asks us to consider the idea and possibility of one world, one network, this paper addresses Facebook/Zuckerberg’s metaverse as one possibility for such a network – with all of the dystopian consequence it might entail.
- “Between a Korzybskian Non-Allness and a McLuhan Allatonceness: The Rebirth of Irony in a Post-Covid Epoch”
Adeena Karasick, Pratt Institute
On July 26, 2021, The New York Times declared that due to the functioning of our media and how this affects our socio-political aesthetics – (and I would add, coupled with recent historic events, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Trumpism and Covid) – riddled in contradiction and chaos, we are now craving a sense of empathy, connectedness, catharsis, and as such have entered into a new socio-aesthetic epoch marked by the [death] of irony. It alleged that because of the Internet; and its inability to adequately communicate tone, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Insta, urge an us vs. them attitude; a passionate uplifting OR vehement condemnation. The article further asserts that because media (particularly TV and film) are no longer being predominantly created by white male heroes (who historically were in power for a very long time and had the luxury of exploring nuanced sides of expression), there is no more room for irony, but instead a blanket celebration of all who have been disenfranchised, silenced or misrepresented. And as such, irony has taken a back seat, and contemporary art is marked by sincerity, sentimentality, affect.
If irony functions through a sense of detachment, and empathy proffers a sense of connection, these modes of communication seem oppositional, dichotomous and irreconcilable. However, read through a Korzybskian model of “a consciousness of abstraction,” and with reference to Plato, Aristotle, Freud, Hobbes, Kant, Kierkegaard, and McLuhan, I would like to posit that through a study of the way irony functions in an “allatonceness” of both connection and disconnection, empathy and detachment, it can offer a discursive model needed for this present moment. Not a non-ironic, over-sentimentalized discourse which glosses over darkness, tragedy, and discomfort but rather one that is both distancing, subversive and full of affect, and thereby underscores how modes of complex communicative strategies problematize the foundations of systemic infrastructures, crucial for transformation and change.
- “One World, One Global Village”
María Teresa Nicolás, Universidad Panamericana, Campus México
Laura Trujillo Liñán, Universidad Panamericana, Campus México
Marshall McLuhan claimed that media and technology had a structural impact on society. This is due to the fact that as they are expressions of the human being; they are essentially new types of language through which humans extends their senses. In this paper we will present the case of Coursera, which, through its virtual courses, has tried to standardize and unify education throughout the world, thus achieving, despite isolation, the unity of one world, one global village.
- “Timespace and the Study of Media Environments”
Lance Strate, Fordham University
Media ecology is concerned with three overarching types of environments: the symbolic, the technological, and the biophysical. The concepts of space and time are in large part products of culture, which is to say concepts emerging out of our symbolic and technological environments. As our symbolic and technological environments differ, from one place and era to another, so do our concepts of space and time. Beyond these differences, however, Einsteinian physics posits the existence of the unified field of spacetime as the ultimate environment of the universe. This view privileges the concept of space, however, to the extent that it essentially eliminates the concept of time, reducing it to a form, or dimension, of space. This can be understood as using space as a metaphor for time, a conceptualization that has its origins in various forms of timekeeping dating back to antiquity. An alternative view would be to reverse the relationship between space and time, and substitute the idea of timespace, and space as a function of time. Support for this alternate conceptualization can be found in our contemporary media environment, specifically in the concepts of cyberspace and cybertime.
See https://www.icahdq.org/page/ICA2022 and/or contact the MEA’s ICA liaison Thom Gencarelli at thom.gencarelli@manhattan.edu for more details. |
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CALL FOR NEWSLETTER CONTENT To submit your news to In Medias Res, the official monthly newsletter of the Media Ecology Association, members can click here for the submission form.
We are looking for news that is relevant to the members of MEA. This might include member achievements (i.e., journal publications, books, creative works, etc.), awards received, upcoming relevant conferences, recent books that MEA members should be aware of, web content that might interest MEA members, news about upcoming EME issues, calls for submissions, etc.
The deadline for submissions to be included in the next month's newsletter is the 28th of every month at 5pm EST. |
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MEA's newest Recording Secretary, Bernadette "bird" Bowen, recently published an article titled "Higher Education Attacks in Silence." The article can be viewed here. |
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If you liked Jacques Ellul's Technological Society, you are going to love Bernard Charbonneau's Mediatized Society! Given Jacques Ellul’s role at the origins of the Media Ecology intellectual tradition, it is high time to include in its canon his mentor Bernard Charbonneau (1910-1996), the French pioneer of political ecology to whom Ellul owed his key insights about Technological Society (1954). Summing up their lifelong engagement with media issues, Charbonneau's own book on Mediatized Society (1986) finally came out in French in November 2021 as La Société médiatisée (Paris: R & N). Charbonneau scholar Christian Roy has created a Patreon page to make this long-unpublished work available to a wider, English-reading public at the same time as it appears in French, by crowdfunding his translation of it in installments, with the blessing of Bernard Charbonneau's estate and the book's publisher. Roy is the translator of Bernard Charbonneau, The Green Light. A Self-Critique of the Ecological Movement (Bloomsbury, 2018; French editions: 1980, 2009, 2022). For an overview of Charbonneau's insights into Media Ecology in their activist context from the 1930s to the 1990s, see Christian Roy's article “Technological Society as Mediatized Society: An Introduction to Bernard Charbonneau’s Media Critique in its Bordeaux School Context”, in New Explorations, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Autumn 2021). For more information and to subscribe, go to: https://www.patreon.com/christianroymedia |
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Congratulations to MEA award winner and board member Julia M. Hildebrand on the recent publication of her book:
Aerial Play: Drone Medium, Mobility, Communication, and Culture
Palgrave Macmillan (Geographies of Media Series)
This book explores recreational uses of consumer drones from the lenses of media ecology, mobile communication, mobilities research, and science and technology studies. In this provocative ethnography, Julia M. Hildebrand discusses camera drones as mobile media for meaningful play. She thus widens perspectives onto the flying camera as foremost unmanned aircraft, spying tool, or dangerous toy towards a more comprehensive understanding of its potentials.
How should we situate drone practices in recreational spaces? What ways of seeing, moving, and being do hobby drones open up? Across chapters about drone geography, communication, mobility, visuality, and human-machine relations, Aerial Play introduces novel frameworks for drone affordances, such as communication on the fly, disembodied mobilities, auratic vertical play, and drone-mindedness.
In the mobile companionship with her own drone, Hildebrand contributes an innovative “auto-technographic” method for the self-reflective study of media and mobility. Ultimately, her grounded and aerial fieldwork illuminates new technological, mobile, visual, and social relations in everyday spaces.
To purchase a copy: https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9789811621949
To access the ebook via SpringerLink: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-2195-6
Endorsements:
“In Aerial Play, Julia M. Hildebrand provides a serious, scholarly, and accessible study of a highly significant new medium that is altering the world that we live in, and the way that we view ourselves. Drones are not simply toys, they are our future, and this book offers us essential aid in understanding this important aspect of our evolving media environment. Drawing on the powerful tools made available via the media ecology intellectual tradition, combined with a multidisciplinary methodology, Hildebrand delivers an analysis that is both rigorous and readable, and above all insightful and provocative. Read it, and you will never look up at the sky in the same way again!”
– Lance Strate, Fordham University, USA
“In a short amount of time, drones have become a ubiquitous technology. And while scholarly attention has been focused on commercial and military contexts, the recreational drone has been relatively overlooked. That is, until Aerial Play: Drone Medium, Mobility, Communication and Culture. Aerial Play addresses some of the complex debates around quotidian surveillance and mundane mobilities and how these practices recalibrate how we understand media ecology, mobile communication, mobilities research, and science and technology studies. Traversing themes such as drone geography, communication, mobility and new visualities, Aerial Play also explores how drones can help us reinvent our digital methods. Hildebrand’s playful and yet robust approach to drones encourages us to rethink the paradigm between media and mobility.”
– Larissa Hjorth, RMIT University, Australia
“Dr. Hildebrand offers no-nonsense and straightforward insights into one of the growing niches of drone practices: flying for fun! Written at the crossroads of mobilities and media studies, Aerial Play is a must-read for students, researchers within media, mobilities, geography, and technology studies. Recreational drone flyers may indeed also find it useful.”
– Ole B. Jensen, Aalborg University, Denmark |
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Call for Submissions for Explorations in Media Ecology Vol. 20 All articles submitted should be original work and must not be under consideration by other publications.
Explorations in Media Ecology, the journal of the Media Ecology Association, accepts submissions that extend our understanding of media (defined in the broadest possible terms), that apply media ecological approaches and/or that advance media ecology as a field of inquiry.
As an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary publication, EME welcomes contributions embracing diverse theoretical, philosophical and methodological approaches to the study of media and processes of mediation through language, symbols, codes, meaning and processes of signification, abstracting and perception; art, music, literature, aesthetics and poetics; form, pattern and method; materials, energy, information, technology and technique; mind, thought, emotion, consciousness, identity and behavior; groups, organizations, affiliations, communities; politics, economics, religion, science, education, business and the professions; societies and cultures; history and the future; contexts, situations, systems and environments; evolution and ecology; the human person, human affairs and the human condition; etc.
EME publishes peer-reviewed scholarly articles, essays, research reports, commentaries and critical examinations, and includes several special features. Our Pedagogy Section focuses on teaching strategies and resources, pedagogical concerns and issues relating to media ecology education; we are particularly interested in articles that share great ideas for teaching (GIFTs) media ecology in the classroom. The Probes Section features short items that are exploratory or provocative in nature. Creative writing on media ecological themes can be found in our Poetry Section. Questions and matters of concern to media ecology scholars are taken up in our Forum Section. And our Review Section includes individual book reviews and review essays.
EME is a refereed journal. Strict anonymity is accorded to both authors and referees. References and citations should follow the Harvard Referencing system, and the journal otherwise follows standard British English for spelling and punctuation. Submissions can be uploaded online at: https://callisto.newgen.co/intellect/index.php/EME/submissions
Direct inquiries to
• Ernest A. Hakanen, Editor: eah22@drexel.edu
• Alexander Jenkins, Managing Editor: arj28@drexel.edu
• Gregory Loring-Albright, Editorial Assistant: gsa33@drexel.edu
• Corey Anton, Probes Editor: antonc@gvsu.edu
• Jeff Bogaczyk, Review Editor: jbogaczyk@gmail.com
• Adeena Karasick, Poetry Editor: adeenakarasick@cs.com
• Emanuela Patti, Forum Editor: empatti@gmail.com
• Michael Plugh, Pedagogy Editor: mplugh01@manhattan.edu |
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Call for Papers - EME's 20th Anniversary
Call for Papers: Invited special issue in celebration of EME’s 20th
anniversary.
Issue: 20:4
We welcome contributions that celebrate the 20th anniversary of the
Explorations in Media Ecology: The official Journal of the Media Ecology
Association. Contributions can come in the form of analyses, essays,
poetry, art, reviews, etc.
Possible topics welcomed in the issue, but not limited to:
Past and future trends in the journal or media ecology
Discussion of influential articles, poetry, art, reviews
Inspirational authors of the MEA
Traditions kept alive by the journal and ME. Please email contributions directly to EME's Editorial Assistant, Gregory Loring-Albright, at gsa33@drexel.edu |
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Working Group for Increasing Inclusivity
Following a special workshop in the 2020 MEA convention, organized by Carolin Aronis (University of Colorado, Boulder), Peggy Cassidy (Adelphi University), Rachel Armamentos (Fordham University), and Bernadette Ann Bowen (Bowling Green State University)—sixteen MEA members volunteered to become new members of this group. Three of them stepped forward to lead the group. The new group members include board members, faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, all from different institutions and countries, and some are more new to the MEA while others are long standing members.
Multiple issues to strengthen MEA and the Media Ecology as a field of study were identified through the convention session (thank you for all contributors!). |
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Virtual Coffee with a Media Ecologist Are you interested in media ecology and have some questions about it? Are you working on a study related to media ecology and searching for advice? Are you an instructor looking for a media ecology expert to invite as a virtual guest speaker to one of your classes?
Get in touch with us! We are happy to schedule a “virtual coffee” appointment with you. Simply fill out the form below to set up a short call or virtual meeting with a scholar from the MEA.
The format is open to all. We especially encourage students and early-career scholars interested in media ecology to get in touch with us. Do you have a background in media ecology and would like to volunteer for virtual coffee meetings with those looking to learn more about it? Send an email to Julia M. Hildebrand.
Arrange a Virtual Coffee appointment on our website. |
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Donate to MEA through AmazonSmile
When you order through AmazonSmile, the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products to the charitable organization of your choice."
To use it, go to smile.amazon.com and sign in as you usually do. Directly under the search bar, you will find a pull-down for supported charities. Search for and select Media Ecology Association. |
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