The Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies

Antonio López is Professor of Communications and Media Studies at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. He has a research focus on bridging ecojustice with media education and is a founding theorist and architect of ecomedia literacy. He created the website ecomedialiteracy.org to provide resources for students and educators. His monographs are Ecomedia Literacy: Integrating Ecology into Media Education (2021), Greening Media Education: Bridging Media Literacy with Green Cultural Citizenship (2014), The Media Ecosystem: What Ecology Can Teach Us About Responsible Media Practice (2012), and Mediacology: A Multicultural Approach to Media Literacy in the 21st Century (2008). Adrian Ivakhiv is Professor of Environmental Thought and Culture, and Steven Rubenstein Professor of Environment and Natural Resources, at the University of Vermont. From 2024 he will be J. S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. His books include Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature (2013), Shadowing the Anthropocene: Eco-Realism for Turbulent Times (2018), and the forthcoming The New Lives of Images: Digital Ecologies and Anthropocene Imaginaries in More-than-Human Worlds. He is Research Fellow of the Cinepoetics Centre for Advanced Film Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, co-edits the Media+Environment journal, and blogs at Immanence: Ecoculture, Geophilosophy, MediaPolitics. Stephen Rust teaches Cinema Studies and Writing at the University of Oregon and Oregon State University. He is co-editor of Ecocinema Theory and Practice (2013), Ecomedia: Key Issues (2016), and Ecocinema Theory and Practice 2 (2023), and is a founding advisory board member of Media+Environment and the Journal of Environmental Media. Miriam Tola is Assistant Professor at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. Her work explores the intersections between gender, race, species, and the cultural politics of the environmental crisis. Her articles have appeared in journals including South Atlantic Quarterly, Feminist Review, Environmental Humanities, and Feminist Studies. She is the co-editor of Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities and Ecologie della cura. Alenda Y. Chang is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her book, Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games, develops environmentally informed frameworks for understanding and designing digital games. She is a founding co-editor of the open-access journal Media+Environment and co-directs Wireframe, a studio that fosters collaborative theory and creative media practice invested in global social and environmental justice. Kiu-wai Chu is Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities and Chinese Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is also Luce East Asia Fellow 2022–2023 at the National Humanities Center, USA. He is currently Executive Councillor of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE-US) and Living Lexicon co-editor of Environmental Humanities. His research focus includes ecocriticism, human–animal studies, and contemporary film and art in Chinese and global Asian contexts. His work has appeared in Transnational Ecocinema, Ecomedia: Key Issues, Chinese Environmental Humanities, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Asian Cinema, photographies, and Screen.

Introduction

Antonio López, Adrian Ivakhiv, Stephen Rust, Miriam Tola, Alenda Y. Chang, and Kiu-wai Chu

PART I Ecomedia Theory

1 When Do Media Become Ecomedia?

Adrian Ivakhiv and Antonio López

2 Three Ecologies: Ecomediality as Ontology

Adrian Ivakhiv

3 Meaning, Matter, Ecomedia

Christy Tidwell

4 Blue Media Ecologies: Swimming through the Mediascape with Sir David Attenborough

Stephen Rust and Verena Wurth

5 Political and Apolitical Ecologies of Digital Media

Sy Taffel

6 Centering Africa in Ecomedia Studies: Interview with Cajetan Iheka

Miriam Tola, Kiu-wai Chu, and Stephen Rust

7 Ecomedia and Empire in the US–Mexico Borderlands, 1880–1912

Carlos Alonso Nugent

8 Spatial Documentary Studies, El Mar La Mar, and Elemental Media Remediated

Janet Walker

9 Ecomedia Literacy: Bringing Ecomedia Studies into the Classroom

Antonio López

PART II Ecomateriality

10 Disaggregated Footprints: An Infrastructural Literacy Approach to the Sustainable Internet

Nicole Starosielski, Hunter Vaughan , Anne Pasek, and Nicholas R. Silcox

11 Collapse Informatics and the Environmental Impact of Information and Communication Technologies

Laura U. Marks

12 Electronic Environmentalism: Monitoring and Making Ecological Crises

Jennifer Gabrys

13 Radiant Energy and Media Infrastructures of the South

Rahul Mukherjee

14 Micro/Climates of Play: On the Thermal Contexts of Games

Alenda Y. Chang

15 Relational Ecologies of the Gramophone Disc

Elodie A. Roy

16 Core Dump: The Global Aesthetics and Politics of E-Waste

Mehita Iqani

PART III Political Ecology

17 Carbon Capitalism, Communication, and Artificial Intelligence: Placing the Climate Emergency Center Stage

Benedetta Brevini and Daisy Doctor

18 Environmental Media Management: Overcoming the Responsibility Deficit

Pietari Kääpä and Hunter Vaughan

19 Property Rights Control in the Data-Driven Economy: The Media Ecology of Blockchain Registries

Jannice Käll

20 Common Pool Resources, Communication, and the Global Media Commons

Patrick D. Murphy and E. Septime Sessou

21 #NOLNG253! Media Use in Modern Environmental Justice Movements

Ellen E. Moore and Anna Bean

22 Contesting Digital Colonial Power: Indigenous Australian Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Digital Worlds

Corrinne Sullivan and Jessica McLean

23 Who Makes Our Smartphones? Four Moments in Their Lifecycle

Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller

PART IV Ecocultures

24 Media and Ecocultural Identity

Tema Milstein, Gabi Mocatta, and José Castro-Sotomayor

25 Eco-Territorial Media Practices: Defending Bodies, Territories, and Life Itself in Latin America

Diana Coryat

26 Mapping for Accountability: Decolonizing Land Acknowledgment Initiatives

Salma Monani and Sarah Gilsoul

27 Black Media Philosophy and Visual Ecologies: A Conversation between Armond Towns and Jeremy Kamal

Armond Towns and Jeremy Kamal

28 On the Ecological Futurabilities of Experimental Film Labs

Noélie Martin and Jacopo Rasmi

29 Popular Music: Folk and Folk Rock as Green Cultural Production

John Parham

30 Women in the Global Pandemic Media Imagination: Mimetic Desire, Scapegoating Buddhist Hermeneutic, and Beyond

Chia-ju Chang

PART V Eco-Affects

31 Ecomentia, from Televised Catastrophe to Performative Assembly: Collapsonaut Attention in a House on Fire

Yves Citton

32 Feeling Wild: The Mediation of Embodied Experience

Alexa Weik von Mossner

33 Social Realism and Environmental Crisis: Clio Barnard’s Dark River

David Ingram

34 Ecopolitical Satire in the Global North

Nicole Seymour and Anthony Lioi

35 Fear and Loathing in Ecomedia: Channeling Fear through Horror Tropes in Invasive Species Outreach

Katrina Maggiulli

36 Slow Media, Eco-Mindfulness, and the Lifeworld

Jennifer Rauch