Examining Ecologies in STS and Media Studies

• In Event: Media Studies Interruptions of STS - I

Abstract

Thinking through scientific production and mediation through the metaphor of an ecosystem has long had purchase within STS and media studies. Accordingly, this presentation explores the concept of ecologies in both fields. The intent is to outline what media ecology and its legacy is as media studies has evolved, what an ecology of communication perspective adds, and how theorization of ecologies within STS can further aid this evolution. The presentation focuses the most on the work of David Altheide, Stefan Helmreich, Marshall McLuhan, and Susan Leigh Star.

As a case study for these insights, I will discuss open source mapping interventions into crowdsourced disaster mapping on a transnational scale, a component of my dissertation research. This research draws particularly from participant observation experiences interning with Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) to support various projects, but namely malaria eradication mapping. I will also incorporate the work of HOT Microgrant projects, community-based mapping collaborations in the Global South that HOT supports.

In discussing insights from these experiences and collaboratives, I show how contemporary forms of digitally mediated participatory mapping can be best described in terms of ecologies. More broadly, I use these connections to situate media studies as well-positioned to explore the more nuanced sense of ecologies that results from bridging its historical investment in the term with theory and research from STS which complicates what an ecology may encompass. I also address shared methodological complexities between the two areas of study that I believe a focus on ecologies illuminates.

Author

• Ned Prutzer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign