Week 5.

AC-1201 MEDIA ECOLOGY.

Media Ecology simply means the study of medium of media. Therefore for this post, social network will be use as an example to demonstrate the meaning and the concept of Media Ecology further.

Griffin (2009, p.313) defined Media Ecology as, "The study of different personal and social environments created by the use of different communication technologies." What Griffin means, it studies the environment of the media, it investigates the use of technology in the world to the society. It focuses on the changing of a medium instead of the content.

Media Ecology critiques communication model, whereby it focuses on system and environment rather than the message of the content. This refers to the method use to communicate,for example, communicating through social network or through telephone. Here it can seen that, when an environment change of medium changes, the whole communication environment changes. Before, communicating another party through telephone would be more private and close as it only involve conversation between two people. Today communicating via social network such as twitter, has become a mainstream where it involves interacting with more than one party in a very much open and pulicized area.

Various social networks in the internet.

Evidently, technology plays a prime role in our daily lives and it brings affect onto social structures. This is called 'Technology Determinism", which can be divided into four factors. First, 'No Determinism'; where media does not shape society. Second, 'Hard Determinism'; it involves in direct contact with media that change the social structures. Third, 'Soft Determinism'; which media may alter social structures. Fourth, 'Partial Determinism'; the media are among many factors shaping society.

There are three proposition of how media effect society. First proposition is, media directly affects the viewer; methaporically it is known as 'Hypodermic Needle'. When  person watches a violent movie for example, it however will not directly transmit the influence suddenly. As critized by Cultivation Theory, the influence will only affect the person overtime. Second proposition is, media is generally psychologically harmful and potentially dangerous. However, it does not necessarily mean it would cause any individual to personally risk themselves into driving over the speed limit as how they saw it in "Fast and Furious" movies, for example. Finally third proposition is where the media damages community and social life. Social network has allowed us to become rigid in our communication system, instead of interacting face to face we send texts or instant messages online. Although it brings benefit such as 'keeping in touch with each other', it however techonologised our evironment of communication system.

As it is widely known with Marshall McLuhan famous quote "The medium is the message". In this case, the social network is the message. McLuhan (1997, p. 7) pointed out "This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the "content" of another medium is always another medium". Therefore the message content in the social network, for example, the message content from Facebook, came from Twitter which could be coming from Yahoo and the process goes on. Thus, the content coming from all different sources change its way of delivering the message and meaning. Allowing and disallowing the content to be understood.

McLuhan further stated that, there are two types of medium; first is 'Hot Medium' where by the medium gives out high load of informations but its participation is low. In terms of written social network such as Facebook, it involves reading what is written on someone's status for example. The participation does not play so much in this case, compared to how much information one would recieved. Second is 'Cold Medium', an opposite of the 'Hot Medium', where the medium gives out low load of informations but its participation is high for example television. In terms of visual social network such as YouTube, people would become addicted in watching the videos streaming online as it does not demand one to read any informations. In contrast to before, the participation play a prime role than any informations one would recieved (McLuhan, 1997, pp. 22-23). 

In Media Ecology, there are three paradigms for media viewing. The first is 'Medium as Conduit', which involve the relationship of human through medium. Second is 'Medium as Language', looking at social network, Twitter; it refers to how the meidum allows people to text in short-forms of English words or use abbreviations. Third is 'Medium as Environment', where the environment of social network has created self-centered individuals; as it allows each every individual to choose who they want to communicate with and avoid the ones they don't want to. As a result, it can construst and deconstruct human relationship.

By understading Media Ecology, one can understand how social sturcture is shapped with the existence of different medium. It can either bring us together or drive us away from each other. The use of medium of media must be put cautious if one does not wish to risk himself to be under the too much media influence which can corrupt his rational mind, such as the influence of media violence, which could happen if one consume overtime.

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory. (7th ed.) Glencoe, IL: McGrawHill.

McLuhan, M. (1997). Understanding media: the existences of man. London; Routledge.