The Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies

Introduction

1 When Do Media Become Ecomedia?

2 Three Ecologies: Ecomediality as Ontology

3 Meaning, Matter, Ecomedia

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

5 Political and Apolitical Ecologies of Digital Media

6 Centering Africa in Ecomedia Studies: Interview with Cajetan Iheka

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

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

9 Ecomedia Literacy: Bringing Ecomedia Studies into the Classroom

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

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

12 Electronic Environmentalism: Monitoring and Making Ecological Crises

13 Radiant Energy and Media Infrastructures of the South

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

15 Relational Ecologies of the Gramophone Disc

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

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

18 Environmental Media Management: Overcoming the Responsibility Deficit

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

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

21 #NOLNG253! Media Use in Modern Environmental Justice Movements

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

23 Who Makes Our Smartphones? Four Moments in Their Lifecycle

24 Media and Ecocultural Identity

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

26 Mapping for Accountability: Decolonizing Land Acknowledgment Initiatives

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

28 On the Ecological Futurabilities of Experimental Film Labs

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

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

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

32 Feeling Wild: The Mediation of Embodied Experience

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

34 Ecopolitical Satire in the Global North

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

36 Slow Media, Eco-Mindfulness, and the Lifeworld

Biography

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.

"This Handbook undertakes a crucial reboot of media studies in light of the global climate crisis, reckoning with an array of urgent planetary matters. Assembling the most lucid thinkers in ecomedia studies, the book confronts the entanglement of media and ecology and unfurls vital forms of research and action."

Lisa Parks, Distinguished Professor of Media Studies, UC Santa Barbara

"Media Studies should always have been Ecomedia Studies, but it wasn’t. A generation of pioneer scholars worked to change that, and most of them have written chapters for this absolutely essential collection. This book will from now on be a key reference-point."

Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science

"This collection is extremely useful in both being aware of the earlier waves of eco-criticism while stating out clearly and in depth that the only way forward for media studies is with ecology at its core – not just as one ‘theme’ but as the very essence of how politics and planetary futures unfold. The Handbook will become essential reading."

Jussi Parikka, Aarhus University, author of Insect Media and A Geology of Media

"The Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies is a timely constellation of essays that whirls into the elements, borderlands, digital worlds, energetics, and spheres of affect—addressing how media not only represent the environment but are fundamentally of the environment. This book will be a valuable reference for years to come."

Melody Jue, Associate Professor of English, UC Santa Barbara, author of Wild Blue Media