Media Ecology as a tern is a relatively new idea to social studies as its focus revolves around the influences that technology has on society. First established by Marshall McLauen in 1964, the introduction of the term did not occur until 1968 when Neil Postman.
To understand this terminology we first have to look at the terms separately.
· Ecology refers to the interaction of organisms and their surrounding natural environment.
· Media refers to all the tools used to transmit, receive and store data.
So back to Media Ecologies...Together these terms literally refer to how organisms i.e. people interact with the tools used to manipulate data.
So how can media be an environment? The media is an ever changing and growing mechanism and cannot be simplified down to individual factors much like a natural ecosystem. To be a high functioning environment all forms of media must work to complement each other not to fight within itself. How the media will accomplish this; is to early to determine?
Due to the recant nature of the terms and the rapid changes scene by the environment study of media ecologies as a whole is difficult. Postman originally suggests that studying media ecologies should in no way differ from environments. Now days media technologies have been created for vast and varying reasons makes the act of studying such a topic have no concrete format to follow.
Media Ecologies is the study of the current state of the Media Environment.
References
-Media Ecology. Society. Media. Ecologies- Wikipedia, 2012. [ONLINE] Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_ecology. [Accessed 8 March 2012]
-What is Media Ecology? Media Ecology Association. [ONLINE] http://www.media-ecology.org/media_ecology/index.html [Accessed 8 March 2012]
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