[ecrea] Ecocinema audiences - a special issue of Interactions: Studies in Communications and Culture

Interactions: Studies in Communications and Cultures (Intellect)

Volume 4 Issue 2

Ecocinema Audiences

Guest editor: Pietari Kääpä (University of Stirling)

Far from reproducing appreciative odes to the nature sublime or 
constructing ideological critiques of the exploitation of nature, 
studies of ecomedia proliferate in scope and intent. Media ecologists 
such as Matthew Fuller (2005) and Jussi Parikka (2010) provide complex 
assertions of the media's material and social role in the world, while 
interventions in materialist media studies by Maxwell and Miller (2011) 
and Bozak (2012) encourage the environmental humanities to venture in 
new directions. Drawing on Guattari's three ecologies (2000) of nature, 
society and the mind, this materialist turn contributes much to 
exploring the relationship between natural resources and the society in 
which the media operate as well as the material realities with and 
within which the media work.

While the three ecologies hold central roles in ecosophical debates by 
Ivakhiv (2013) et al., the study of audience responses and their 
material implications remain somewhat ignored in all this. Reception 
practices are very much implicit in much of the work of media ecologists 
as well as ecomedia scholars, but even as we outreach into the realms of 
theory-becoming-material, we need to get a better understanding of the 
different forms of impact the media have on their viewing publics. This 
is not intended as a call for simplification of theoretical advances, 
but as a means to ensure a place for thorough studies of audience 
understandings and appropriations of environmental messages in film and 
other media. Thus, while it is clear that audiences in general have been 
a central concern for ecomedia scholars, the cognitive and 
socio-political processes of reception are still not thoroughly 
understood. Thus, it is necessary to consolidate these brief 
observations into more systematic approaches to studying both 
hypothetical and actual audience responses to environmental 
communications, a concern this issue aims to address.

Contents

Understanding the audiences of ecocinema

Author: Pietari Kääpä 
<http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Contributor,a=K/view-Contact-Page,id=35451/> 



Ecocinema for all: Reassembling the audience

Author: Chris Tong 
<http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Contributor,a=T/view-Contact-Page,id=35449/> 


Towards a political economy of ecodocumentary

Author: Megan Selheim 
<http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Contributor,a=S/view-Contact-Page,id=35450/> 


Princess Mononoke and beyond: New nature narratives for children

Author: Benjamin Thevenin 
<http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Contributor,a=T/view-Contact-Page,id=35447/> 


Audience responses to environmental fiction and non-fiction films

Authors: _Pat Brereton _And Chao-Ping Hong 
<http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Contributor,a=H/view-Contact-Page,id=35448/>

Review: 'Greening the Media'

Author: Kiu-wai Chu 
<http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Contributor,a=C/view-Contact-Page,id=28904/> 


http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-issue,id=2616/


--
Dr. Pietari Kääpä
Lecturer in Communications, Media and Culture
University of Stirling
FK9 4LA
Stirling
Scotland