The first in the Media-Life-Universe trilogy, this volume explores a transdisciplinary notion of media and technology, exploring media as technology, with special attention to its material, historical and ecological ramifications. The authors reconceptualize media from environmental, ecological and systems approaches, drawing not only on media and communication studies, but also philosophy, sociology, political science, biology, art, computer science, information studies and other disciplines.

Featuring a group of internationally known scholars, this collection explores evolving definitions of media and how media technologies are transforming theory and practice. As the current media includes a wider and wider range of concepts, products, services and institutions, the definition of media continues to be in a state of flux. What are media today? How is media studies evolving? How have technologies transformed communication and media theory, and informed praxis? What are some of the futures of media?

The collection challenges traditional notions of media, as well as concepts such as freedom of expression, audience empowerment and participatory media, and explores emergent media including transmedia, virtual reality, online games, metatechnology, remediation and makerspaces.  

Jeremy Swartz is founder of Metamedia @ UofO: A Metadisciplinary Collaboratory and a research associate in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon.

Janet Wasko is a professor of Communication Research in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. She is the author or editor of twenty-two books and is past president of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR).

Preface to a Trilogy

Introduction

Genealogy

1. 'When Multimedia Meant Democracy', Fred Turner, Stanford University (USA)

2. 'Four Reporting Cultures: Designing Humans In and Out of the Future of Journalism', John Markoff, Stanford University (USA)

3. 'Dark Materials: Markets, Machines, Media', Graham Murdock, Loughborough University (UK) 

Meanings of Media

4. 'A Community of Media: There Is a There There', Sean Cubitt, Goldsmiths, University of London (UK)

5. 'Media as Cultural Techniques: From Inscribed Surfaces to Digitalized Interfaces', Sybille Kramer, Freie Universität Berlin (Germany)

6. 'Understanding "Medium" in the Context of the Media Ecology Tradition',  Lance Strate, Fordham University (USA)

Organs and Organization

7. 'Between Media Studies and Organizational Communication: Organizing as the Creation of Organs', François Cooren and Frédérik Matte, Université de Montréal (Canada)

8. 'Paradigms for Creative Industry Research', Angela McRobbie, Goldsmiths, University of London (UK)

9. 'The Politics of Mediation: Colonization to Co-Generative Democracy', Stanley Deetz, University of Colorado Boulder (USA)

Engagement and Extensions

10. 'Phantasmal Selves: Computational Approaches to Understanding Virtual Identities', D. Fox Harrell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)

11. 'Calm Technology/Media and the Limit of Attention', Amber Case, Lewis & Clark College (USA)

12.  'The Next Internet', Vincent Mosco, Queen's University (Canada)

Biomediations

13. 'Biological Dimensions of Media Ecology and Its Relationship to Biosemiotics', Robert K. Logan, University of Toronto (Canada)

14. 'Biomediations: From "Life in Media" to "Living Media"', Joanna Zylinska, Goldsmiths, University of London (UK)

15. 'Lynn Hershman Leeson: The Infinity Engine', Ingeborg Reichle, Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien (Austria)

Repair and Metamedia

16. 'No Issues Without Media: The Changing Politics of Public Controversy in Digital Societies', Noortje Marres, University of Warwick (UK)

17. 'The Poetics and Political Economy of Repair', Steven J. Jackson and Lara Houston, Cornell University (USA)

18. 'Metamedia', Jeremy Swartz, University of Oregon (USA) 

Appendix

Notes on Contributors

Index