[Commlist] Explorations in Media Ecology 17.4 published

Intellect is pleased to announce that Explorations in Media Ecology 17.4 
is now available!

For more information about the issue, click here >> 
https://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-issue,id=3685/

Contents

The official journal of …
Authors: Lance Strate

Reflections of a media ecology flâneuse: On mediated urban spaces and places
Authors: Susan J. Drucker

Cities are rich informative environments. This has been dubbed the urban 
century with, for the first time in human history, more than half the 
world’s population living in cities. Cities are global, smart, 
connected, inclusive, livable, green, sustainable, mega and 
communicative. The urban experience is increasingly influenced by 
technology. From photography to the mobile phone, augmented reality and 
the GPS, the person/environment relationship is altered by media 
technologies. Urban communication is a growing field examining 
communication in urban sites and urban influences on communication. What 
is the relationship between media ecology and urban communication? From 
Benjamin and McLuhan to Postman and Strate, this article explores the 
connections between urban communication and media ecology and suggests 
urban spaces and places call out for the attention of media ecologists.

Hot media, technological transformation and the plague of the dark 
emotions: Erich Fromm, Viktor Frankl and the recovery of meaning
Authors: Barry Liss

This article takes the position that our contemporary overheated media 
environment lends itself to comfortable passivity, resulting in mental 
breakdown in the guise of the dark emotions: anxiety, melancholia and 
boredom. This is especially the case with the inevitable synergy of the 
upcoming technological transformations from genetic modification, 
virtual reality simulacra and artificial intelligence/robotics. After 
discussing the data from the World Health Organization regarding the 
stark increase of people across the globe suffering from depression and 
anxiety, this article weds the concepts of McLuhan’s hot–cool 
distinction with Fromm’s delineation of the productive character 
orientation. Following Fromm, this article argues that joy ensues from 
reason, productive labour and love–sorrow from ignorance, alienated work 
and indifference. When we wilfully abrogate our responsibilities to self 
and other via non-participational mediated forms, we cede away our 
potential for growth and development. This leads to the emotional 
breakdowns of guilt, boredom, anxiety and melancholia. Viktor Frankl’s 
logotherapeutic perspective is discussed as a counterbalance to the 
social effects wrought by our overheated technological environment. 
Frankl’s stress on phenomenological meaning as the cornerstone of 
existence provides a lens to understanding the affects of an 
over-reliance on technological gadgetry.

Colon. Hyphen. Closed parenthesis. Formal causes of figure and ground in 
punctuation and writing
Authors: Matthew S. Lindia

The question of causality in the invention of the alphabet has long 
eluded the theories of media scholars and linguists alike. In spite of 
the attention to the effects of the alphabet and literacy within the 
tradition of media ecology, not much work exists tracing the effects 
back to the causes and explaining why the alphabet emerged in the first 
place. By applying the principles of McLuhan’s understanding of 
Aristotle’s notion of formal cause, the author approaches the invention 
of the alphabet as a grammatical step in the evolution of written 
language. Most simply, this article proposes that the development of 
alphabetic writing was required as an unintended consequence of writing 
via inscription on clay and stone tablets (as opposed to writing via 
application on paper, papyrus or bamboo). The author then situates this 
claim within the broader context of the evolution of grammar and 
punctuation, demonstrating that the figure of writing and grammar has 
shifted and evolved notably with every transition of a new medium on 
which words are fixed, even up through the electric and digital ages. 
Finally, this article situates the evolution of emoji within the context 
of grammatical evolution, and not, as some have asserted, as the return 
to pictographic language.

The genealogy of the textbook as an educational form: Orality and 
literacy in education
Authors: Norm Friesen

In this article, I provide a short but broad history of the textbook as 
a multimedia pedagogical and cultural form. In doing so, I pay 
particular attention to the interrelationship of oral and textual media 
and cultures, highlighting the ways that these two communicative modes 
are reconfigured over the history of this pedagogical form. I also 
situate the textbook in the context of changing instructional methods 
and practices, and I demonstrate that instructional forms and practices 
have neither progressed along with new technologies nor gradually 
evolved from a primitive orality to sophisticated literacy. Instead, I 
show that these practices as well as textbook media change much more in 
synchrony with larger cultural and epistemological developments – such 
as those identified by Michel Foucault, Friedrich Kittler and other 
historians of media and culture.

Where is my attention? A lesson in listening
Authors: Robin Beth Levenson

This exercise, evolved from practices of philosopher George Gurdjief and 
theatre director Constantin Stanislavsky, asks students to use open 
dialogues to test listening skills and explore the nature of 
interpersonal communication, both verbally and non-verbally. It explores 
issues of effective listening and observation, language and 
paralanguage, use of critical thinking-in-action and pathos. It also 
involves the notions of proxemics and chronemics, which are among the 
most important concepts in fields of both communication and media.

Poetry
Authors: Nico Vassilakis

The Village Voice goes silent
Authors: Paul Levinson

Photography: ‘A brothel without walls’ or the ‘Abundant art’?
Authors: John Dowd

The daguerreotype, republican style and theories of the public image
Authors: Cara A. Finnegan

Working through immigration with images
Authors: Jens E. Kjeldsen

Photojournalism is a vital resource for thinking, feeling, expressing, 
acting and dealing with problems of collective living, argues Robert 
Hariman and John Louis Lucaites. It is a kind of ‘equipment for living’. 
This article proposes the concept rhetorical working through as a way of 
describing how photojournalistic rhetoric functions as ‘equipment for 
living’. It argues that humans constantly perform three kinds of 
rhetorical working through: dealing with issues and arguments, dealing 
with social relations and dealing with identity and self.

Radical plurality and visual witnessing
Authors: Wendy Kozol

Normalization of war: The photographer’s cut
Authors: Jon Simons

On the necessity for visualcy
Authors: Julianne H. Newton

Love in the ruins? Or, photography’s radical promise
Authors: Robert Hariman

Book Reviews

Authors: Elaine Kahn And Sheryl Perlmutter Bowen And Lori Ramos And 
Katherine G. Fry And Margaret M. Mullan And Donald Fishman And Carolin 
Aronis

Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan: iProbes and iPhone 
Photographs, Rita Leistner (2014)
The Communication Panacea: Pediatrics and General ­Semantics, Eva Berger 
and Isaac Berger (2014)
Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing through Other Patterns, Nora 
Bateson (2016)
Exploring the Roots of Digital and Media Literacy, Renee Hobbs (ed.) (2016)
Black Ops Advertising: Native Ads, Content Marketing, and the Covert 
World of the Digital Sell, Mara Einstein (2016)
Regulating Social Media: Legal and Ethical Considerations, Susan J. 
Drucker and Gary Gumpert (eds) (2013)
Communication and the Baseball Stadium: Community, Commodification, 
Fanship, and Memory, Dale Herbeck and Susan J. Drucker (eds) (2017)
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