Have you ever considered the possibility that media technologies aren’t just add-ons to our lives, but catalysts for shifts in our culture? Dennis Cali is a professor in the UT Tyler Communication Department. He’s globally recognized for his expertise in Media Ecology. The field explores the transformative relationship between humans and media technologies. Cali breaks down the seven elements of media ecology into digestible pieces. He discusses how our media-saturated environment impacts us, both individually and societally, and how our interactions with media shape our brains and behaviors.
MIKE LANDESS: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. Media Ecology and the study of it has been around since 1971, but frankly, I’d never heard of it. UT Tyler Communication Department Professor Dennis Cali is considered to be one of the world’s foremost experts on media ecology, and he’s our guest today. Welcome.
DENNIS CALI: Thank you. Happy to be here.
MIKE LANDESS: I’ve read that Media Ecology is the study of media environments, the idea that technology and techniques and modes of information and codes of communication play a leading role in human affairs. I didn’t understand what any of that meant. Explain.
DENNIS CALI: Yes, to complicate it even further, there are multiple definitions that don’t always overlap, so it’s not an easy thing to get your head around. But basically, to go to your first definition, it’s like a pursuit of the environment that we’re not aware of. So, like the water that a fish swims in, the fish is not aware of its environment. The point of media ecology is to study everything that’s happening in the environment, by which we mean mainly the culture, and how technology is bringing about these effects, often harmful effects. So, it’s a study of how technology is changing the environment.
LANDESS: I saw a funny meme the other day on social media about everyone was concerned that it was a lack of information that was keeping people in ignorance. And now we have the internet, and that’s not true. We’re still pretty ignorant in a lot of ways.
CALI: In fact, one law of media is that any technology, anything added to the culture, when it’s taken to its extreme, becomes its opposite. So, right now we have so much information that many of us have lost. We’re lost as to how to get to the information we really need. We’re overwhelmed with it.
LANDESS: Yeah, when I speak to groups or speak to classes, it is not a situation in which we don’t have enough information. We’ve got a tsunami of information every day. All we have to do is pick up our phone and open up anything, and it’s crazy. Well, you have a very popular book explaining all of this and you break that explanation down in seven elements. Let’s start with media ecology as a metaphor. What does that mean?
CALI: So, the term “ecology” itself is metaphoric as it’s applied to media, because when you think of ecology you think of the natural ecology. And I showed just yesterday in class, in fact, a little short documentary on the wolves being reintroduced into Yellowstone National Forest. And it makes the point that when a wolf is reintroduced, or any animal or species is introduced to the natural environment, it’s not just the forest plus one. The change is ecological. Everything is affected, because once the foxes are there, the deer start to avoid the foxes, so they move out of valleys and other places where they’re more vulnerable. So, the valleys make it possible, now that deer are not there, for more grass to grow, and then that attracts more birds and so forth. So, the analogy to media is that when we add a computer or a smartphone to the culture, it’s not as if we just have another hammer, another tool. The change is ecological; it affects, it permeates.
LANDESS: It’s a ripple effect. Yes, I see what you’re saying. Well, OK, second element media ecology as a theory of groups, like a field of investigation.
CALI: Yeah, so there’s like a culture of people who study media ecology and within that, there’s sort of the the faces of the presidents carved in the mountain.
LANDESS: Mount Rushmore.
CALI: Yeah, there’s like a Mount Rushmore of media ecologists, Marshall McLuhan being the most prominent one. And, so a lot of what media ecologists do is study some of these pioneering figures and to try to get a hold on how they were able to grasp the technologies that were part of their time.
LANDESS: Now, media ecology as a bibliography. How does that work exactly?
CALI: It’s along those same lines. You know, we would read the primary works of these people, as well as the current, more kind of public intellectual types, like journalists, for example, Nicholas Carr is a famous one who wrote “The Shallows” about how the internet is changing our brains.
LANDESS: Media ecology as a study of environments.
CALI: We look at how the culture is changing because of technology. And a good example is, I think I even mentioned this in my book. In 1992 or something like that, I went outside on our back porch to check on my dog, and I saw this light flashing from our neighbor’s house and I thought it might have been a disco ball, because it was that kind of like flashes of light, and I kind of peered around and saw that it was their TV. And at the time I was teaching media literacy, and I had the data about how many people were, how many hours per day people were watching TV. I think it was like 7 hours a day, and so I thought, wow, if the frame changes as quickly as that was changing- every two to three seconds- and you multiply that by 7 hours, then it’s no wonder why we’d have attention deficit disorders. We’re being conditioned to almost require a constant change of frame. So, that’s just one example about one aspect of our existence that a media ecologist is concerned with.
LANDESS: Yeah, and interestingly enough, it’s not just television. We get that on our phones. We get a little… We check into Instagram and there’s a reel, and there’s, gee, they’re doing this, that… It’s kind of flitting all by.
CALI: Exactly.
LANDESS: Yeah, all right. Media ecology as a metaphor for evolution. Listen to me, I’m reading all of this. I don’t grasp it. I’m hoping that you’ll pick it up and explain it to me.
CALI: My students have the very same reaction, and I think it’s actually I would be surprised, startled, even if anybody did know what this is because it almost resists tidy classification, and it’s because everything is so interrelated, it’s not linear.
LANDESS: Wrap this up for us and tell me what can we take away from media ecology. What is it that will benefit us individually or as a society by that study?
CALI: I think on the most practical level, if you think about how this device-
LANDESS: He’s holding a phone.
CALI: Yeah, holding a phone, which I see even if I go to a restaurant, and I see an old couple having dinner together. They’re not talking, they’re just like chewing their cuds as they as they look at phones.
LANDESS: As they graze through the phone.
CALI: Exactly, and it’s even worse, if you can imagine that, with younger people. Because they’re so, it’s almost a reflex that they take it out to check. So, just in terms of how we relate to each other, it’s affected by just the mere presence of it, never mind, you know, the other properties of it and the messages that are in it. So, just to be aware of of the fact that any medium that you choose exerts effects beyond whatever its primary function, is. It affects how we relate to each other, how we think and all that.
LANDESS: Fascinating, absolutely fascinating and a little scary, too.
CALI: In fact, that’s part of what media ecology wants to accomplish-to kind of awaken us to the fact that this water that we fish are swimming in is potentially toxic.
LANDESS: Good to know. Our guest has been UT Tyler Communication Professor Dennis Cali. To hear this interview again or to share it, go to KVUT.org. For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)