Media Ecology

Media Ecology is made up of a lot of components, and without one component, the others would be affected negatively. They all need each other to work successfully.

Media Ecology is made up of:

• Audience
• Creators
• Distribution
• Government/ Law
• Institutions
• Money
• Social Media
• Technology

I created a mind map that showed what would happen if technology wasn’t a part of the Ecological World and how it would affect the other aspects of Media Ecology. The main aspects that would be affected would be:

• Audience – without technology there wouldn’t be an online audience to reach out to because there would be no customers; the only media available would be newspapers and cinemas etc which only branch out to a small variety of the audience
• Creators – without the invention of technology, platforms like social media, television and radio wouldn’t have been invented and therefore there would’ve been no need for creators such as actors, musicians and designers because there would have been no media for them to appear on.
• Money – technology brings profit to companies, such as Apple, which then allows them to produce and sell more products. However, without technology these companies wouldn’t have been created which would increase unemployment; this links in to how the creators would be affected.

I will use the concept of Media Ecology when producing my magazine because it will help me think about how I can reach out to the biggest audience possible by distributing my magazine in the best way. I will also consider the use of social media platforms because it is another way of reaching out to my audience, specifically the younger generation, and it can help me promote my magazine.

These are the collective ideas of how the Media Ecology links together – it represents that without one component, the Ecological world would stop.

Our Media Ecology Lego Land

Our Lego Land represented a Fire Station and it symbolized how a the media ecology would work because without one component, the whole operation would collapse.

Our example was that an old man, Steve, had a troublesome pet dinosaur who kept getting stuck up trees. Conveniently, Steve lives next to the Fire Station so whenever he needed help to get his dinosaur out of the tree he could just pop around and ask for some help from Jeff and Tim (the Firemen). Steve would then pay the government for the station’s service. This money then went into the Fire Station where the Firemen were paid which helped Jeff and Tim with their families and it also went into maintaining the Fire Station.

Without Steve’s troublesome dinosaur, no money would go into helping the Fire Station or into Jeff and Tim’s pockets; this would make the Fire Station collapse and stop operating. Similarly, without the Fire Station, Steve would never be able to get his dinosaur out of the tree. Therefore this represents Media Ecology because without one component, everything else wouldn’t work.