February is Black History Month in the United States— check out these titles that relate to race and technology: 

Black Software (Oxford University Press, 2019) – Charlton Mcllwain 

Algorithms of Oppression (NYU Press, 2018) – Safiya Umoja Noble

Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (Polity Press, 2019) – Ruha Benjamin

Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life (Duke University Press, 2019) – Ruha Benjamin

Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures (Critical Cultural Communication) (NYU Press, 2020) – André Brock Jr. 

Beyond Hashtags: Racial Politics and Black Digital Networks (NYU Press, 2019) – Sarah Florini

«Critical technocultural discourse analysis« (New Media & Society, 2016) – André Brock Jr.

«#LaughingWhileBlack: Gender and the Comedy of Social Media Blackness» (Feminist Media Histories, 2017) – Brandy Monk-Payton

Message from MEA President – Paolo Granata

Dear members of the MEA, dear colleagues and friends!

I am extremely honoured to serve as the new president of the MEA. As you certainly can imagine, this is a huge privilege and I will give my best to serve our association with the same dedication and commitment of past presidents. In this regard, I would like to thank our outgoing President, Paul Grosswiler, for his great work, and the board members for their friendly support. I would also like to thank all MEA members for the many messages of encouragement that I have received.

As a growing community of academics, researchers, media practitioners, artists, and activists, I’d like to see our association being more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. I also plan to dedicate my term as MEA’s new president focusing on youth development and enhancing youth participation. The vibrant spirit of the young ambassadors of media ecology will make our association thrive for generations to come.

Finally, I would like to invite and encourage all of you to attend our Twenty-First Annual Convention (June 18–21, 2020) in Adelphi University, Garden City, New York.

I look forward to seeing all of you in June.

Ad maiora!

MEA Membership Renewal – due February 15

The Media Ecology Association invites all members to renew their membership by February 15, when your current membership expires. If your membership lapses, you will not receive the next issue of Explorations in Media Ecology and will lose access to the online version as well as other member area benefits. Please log into the website at www.media-ecology.org, and then log in using your email ID and password and follow the directions. You may pay online via PayPal or pay by check made payable to the Media Ecology Association and mailed to our treasurer, Paul Soukup, S.J., at the Communication Department; Santa Clara University; 500 El Camino Real; Santa Clara, CA  95053 USA. For those outside the U.S., you may also pay by Western Union money order sent to psoukup@scu.edu.

Membership will renew at the level from 2019; if you wish to change your membership, please drop Paul Soukup a note. If you wish, you may also register for the convention at the early registration price. If you wish to wait on that, early registration discounts are available until mid-May.

*Please note: The Media Ecology Association Executive Board decided that the newsletter will be available online to all interested readers. However, only members can be featured in the newsletter itself. If you are a MEA member, please fill out this form (include a call to submit material+ link). 

Working Group for Increasing Inclusivity 

The Media Ecology Association is looking to establish a Working Group for Increasing Inclusivity in the Association. 

The first official initiative will take place at the Convention. In a special session, we plan to discuss issues of inclusion and exclusion, share feelings and facts in regard to the relationship of the younger generation with the Association, as well as of women, LGBTQ, people of color, non-English speakers, and other relevant issues that matter to us. In this session we will come up with topics to work on in the coming year, assign interested MEA members and a chair, and will develop a clear working plan. This session, as well as the future Working Group, are open to all MEA members.

If you would like to volunteer and or have some suggestions and inquiries preparing for this session, please send these to board member Carolin Aronis: carolin.aronis@colostate.edu.

All contributions, ideas, shared experiences, and good will are encouraged. 

Call for the 2022 Annual Convention Host 

The MEA is currently looking for a host for the Twenty-Third Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association in 2022. If you are interested in hosting, please visit our website and email our Executive Secretary Fernando Gutiérrez at secretary@media-ecology.net.

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.

Welcome to the MEA Board 

Please help us welcome the new additions to the MEA board:

Adriana Braga

Vice President-Elect

Adriana is Associate Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and researcher of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq/Brazil). She is author of the books Summer-Body (2016); Maternal-Electronic Personae (2008); CMC, Identities and Gender (2005) and the book coauthored with Lance Strate and Paul Levinson Introdução à Ecologia das Mídias (2019).

Ernest Hakanen

EME Editor-in-Chief

Ernest is Head and Professor of the Communication, Culture, and Media program in the Department of Communication at Drexel University. His research interests lie in intellectual history with an emphasis on media effects, general systems theory, cybernetics, media ecology, post structural theory, and critical media theory. Ernie is the author of Branding the Teleself: Media Effects Discourse and the Changing Self and editor of several other books.

Rachel Armamentos

In Media Res Newsletter Editor

Rachel is a MA student of Public Media – Strategic Communication at Fordham University. Rachel co-authored an introductory book, Surviving the Technological Society: The Layman’s Guide to Media Ecology (ISBN 10-1732660409). Following her MA, she plans to further her education with a PhD and conduct research to explore the nuances of digital technology on theology and interpersonal relationships.

Jaqueline McLeod Rogers

At-Large Member

Jaqueline McLeod Rogers is Professor and Chair of the Department of Rhetoric, Writing and Communications at the University of Winnipeg. She co-edited and contributed several chapters to the collection, Finding McLuhan: The Mind, The Man, The Message (U of Regina, 2015). She co-edited a special edition of the journal Imaginations, “McLuhan and the Arts.” She has completed and is now completing revisions to a-5 chapter book, McLuhan’s Techno-Sensorium City (for Lexington). 

John Dowd

At-Large Member

John is an Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. He is the author of the book Educational Ecologies: Toward a Symbolic-Material Understanding of Discourse, Technology, and Education, which explores the symbolic-material biases of the DIY educational movement. In his role as At-Large Member he hopes to continue contributing to the diversity, growth, and intellectual vitality of MEA through his research, outreach, and teaching. 

MEA @ NCA 2020 

The Call for Papers for MEA at the National Communication Association is available — submissions are due March 25. The convention, «Communication at the Crossroads,» will be held in Indianapolis, IN from November 19–22, 2020.

The 2020 NCA convention theme, “Communication at the Crossroads,” suggests an emphasis on intra-disciplinary collaboration and exploration. Media ecology is situated to explore communication in this way as a metadiscipline that studies the ways in which human action shapes and is shaped by our media environments. The term “media” is broadly construed in the field and includes but is not limited to communication, technology, technique, orality and literacy, the arts, economics, education, ethics, etc. Thus, media ecology explores the conditions of human experience made possible by the complex patterns of interaction within and among our symbolic-material environments. These complex patterns of interaction represent a crossroads of sorts in an environment Neil Postman characterized by the phrase “information glut.”

The theme of the 2020 Media Ecology Association convention is “Communication Choices and Challenges.” In every act of communication, people make choices. We choose where, when, and how to express ourselves or locate and use information. We choose the medium that seems best suited to the task: are we trying to reach the largest possible audience, get the word out quickly, or ensure that our message reaches future generations? Do we wish to convey a deep sense of intimacy, empathy, authority, or cool distance? Are we looking for information from a wide variety of perspectives, confirmation of what we already believe, or the deepest possible exploration of an issue? Answers to these questions, and more, can help us to choose the right path at our contemporary crossroads, and to navigate a safe course through information glut, and many other confounding obstacles beyond.

This call invites you to explore these concerns, emphasizing the historical and intellectual roots of our field, and their relevance to the theme of Communication at the Crossroads. As such, papers and panels that deal with topics related to the theme are encouraged (though not required). Likewise, proposals that link traditionally distinct thinkers or disciplines to media ecology, extend established ideas or concepts, or otherwise advance existing approaches to the field, are also welcomed.

MEA @ ECA 2020

This year’s Eastern Communication Association convention, «Harboring Innovation,» will be held in Baltimore, MD from April 1-5 2020, and features a number of media ecology-related papers and panels. If you are a member presenting media ecological work, please email our Internet Office Carolin Aronis at carolin.aronis@colostate.edu to add your paper/panel to the MEA @ ECA webpage.

MEA @ ICA 2020

This year’s International Communication Association convention, «Open Communication,» will be held in Gold Coast, Australia from May 21-25 2020, and features a MEA-sponsored panel. If you are a member presenting media ecological work, please email our Internet Office Carolin Aronis at carolin.aronis@colostate.edu to add your paper/panel to the MEA @ ICA webpage.