A Tradition of Media Ecology (literature review)

The term of media ecology has been used in various contexts, so when we ask about the themes under the media ecology tradition, different intellectual groups might give distinct answers. One theory group has been thoroughly illustrated by Casey Man Kong Lum and many other contributors in the book “Perspectives on Culture, Technology, and Communication: The Media Ecology Tradition”. Lum described that the term media ecology has been used as a metaphor including McLuhan, while it was Neil Postman that gave the term a formal definition as the study of media environments encompassing new field of media studies dated in 1968. (p.10-p.11). Postman addressed the fundamental principle of media ecology as “a medium is a technology within which a culture grows; that is to say, it gives form to a culture’s politics, social organization and habitual way of thinking” and the word ecology suggests “interaction between media and human beings give a culture its character; and one might say, help a culture to maintain symbolic balance.” (p.62)

A coherent body of theoretical literature was identified as the intellectual foundation of media ecology tradition. McLuhan is the most visible early key thinker in the field who received attention from both academic and popular venues, and other major players include Jacques Ellul, Harold A. Innis, Lewis Mumford, Walter J. Ong, Postman and others. Just to think about these thinkers’ theoretical contribution, we could have a taste of how broad and deep the definition of media ecology from this group could be. It is a body of theoretical perspectives on understanding culture, technology and communication. Ong’s account on the distinction of orality and literacy draws readers’ attention to a history that spans thousands of years (Ong, 1982). Innis examined the bias of communication supported by histories across many ancient cultures (Innis, 1951). Other research interests summarized by Lum in this field include media and culture (McLuhan, 1951, 1962, 1964), history and technology (Mumford, 1934, 1967, 1970) and urban studies (Mumford, 1938, 1961), behavioral sciences (Watzlawick, Bavelas, & Jason, 1967; see also Watzlawick, 1967), structural anthropology (LeviStrauss, 1966), sociology of technological culture (Ellul, 1964) and propaganda (Ellul, 1965), perceptual psychology (Cantril, 1960), information and systems theories (Shannon & Weaver, 1949; see also Wiener, 1948, 1950), general semantics (Hayakawa, 1964; Korzybski, 1933), cultural anthropology (e.g., Hall, 1959), nonverbal communication (e.g., Birdwhistell, 1952, 1970), classics (e.g., Havelock, 1963, 1976), history of typography (e.g., Eisenstein, 1979) and physics and philosophy (Heisenberg, 1962). As can be seen, the study of media ecology draws from multi-disciplinary intellectual frameworks. Postman generalized the interest of media ecology as communication environments derived from the biological term. (p.62) Relevant research questions might include what the relationship between human beings and the communication environment is, what influence of the shift from oral, typographic, to electronic culture have on our sensory and thinking ways, and how different forms of communication as organisms that interact within environments.

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Birdwhistell, R. L. (1970). Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body Motion Communication. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Cantril, H. (1940). The invasion from Mars: a study in the psychology of panic. Transaction Publishers.
Eisenstein, E. L. (1979). The printing press as an agent of change: communications and cultural transformations in early-modern Europe. Cambridge University Press.
Ellul, J. (1967). The Technological Society. Vintage Books.
Ellul, J. (1973). Propaganda: the formation of men’s attitudes. Vintage Books.
HALL, E. T. (1959). THE SILENT LANGUAGE.
Havelock, E. A. (1963). Preface to Plato. Harvard University Press.
Havelock, E. A. (1976). Origins of western literacy: four lectures delivered at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto, March 25, 26, 27, 28, 1974. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
Hayakawa, S. I., & Hayakawa, A. R. (1990). Language in thought and action. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Heisenberg, W. (2007). Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science. HarperPerennial.
Innis, H. A., & Watson, A. J. (2008). The Bias of Communication. University of Toronto Press.
Korzybski, A. (1994). Science and sanity: an introduction to non-Aristotelian systems and general semantics. Institute of GS.
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McLuhan, M. (1951). The mechanical bride: folklore of industrial man. Vanguard Press.
McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg galaxy: the making of typographic man. University of Toronto Press.
Mumford, L. (1938). Technics and civilization. Routledge.
Mumford, L. (1961). The city in history: its origins, its transformations, and its prospects. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Mumford, L. (1970a). The culture of cities. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
Mumford, L. (1970b). The myth of the machine: the pentagon of power. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
Mumford, L. (1974). The pentagon of power. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Ong, W. J. (2002). Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word. Psychology Press.
Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1964). The mathematical theory of communication. University of Illinois Press.
Watzlawick, P. (1977). How real is real?: Confusion, disinformation, communication. Vintage Books.
Watzlawick, P., Bavelas, J. B., & Jackson, D. D. (1967). Pragmatics of human communication: a study of interactional patterns, pathologies, and paradoxes. Norton.
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