Fielding (un)stable object relations: actor-network theory or media ecology?
This is the text of my section of a panel delivered at the 2017 Australia and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA) conference. Panel members were David Paterno, Adam Muir and myself. The panel abstract reads:
The academic meta-discipline known as Media Ecology (M.E.) is typically seen as a North American tradition owing largely to the origins of the scholars who instantiated and influenced this approach. The Media Ecology Association, however, has recently held two of its annual conventions abroad (in Mexico and Italy). The time is right to survey what might be happening elsewhere across our urbed orb and within the larger medium studies milieu. This panel takes a snapshot of media ecology in the southern hemisphere with particular attention to its position within Australia and New Zealand. Participants will present original reports addressing the state of media ecology, its strengths and weaknesses, and its potential to shift the grounds of conventional ‘media studies’ away from issues of content to sustained considerations of medium.
In his book Reassembling the Social, Bruno Latour (2005) makes a bold claim: “there is no society, no social realm, and no social ties” (p. 108). “But”, he continues, “there exist translations between mediators that may generate traceable associations”. Thus Latour establishes his network. The network, as should be clear, is not a pre-existing social or physical infrastructure. It is rather borne out of the actions of its participants — its actors. The actors themselves are created only in medias res — that is, in the middle of the network.
Latour’s other bold contention is that actors in a network need not even be human. Within this room is a complex network of actors, then, only a small number of which might be recognisable to us as the species homo sapiens sapiens. Each of us has marshalled a series of allies — our clothing, our devices, those with whom are connecting via tweets who are outside of this room, and the chairs upon which we sit. The carpet, walls, computers, and the ideas and disciplines with which we have entered this room are all part of the complex actor network of which we are part. Each has some influence or capacity to act upon the others in this room. Such actions may be by way of physical forces, as in the function of the chair taking your weight, itself put into effect by the gravity of the earth. Others may be immaterial — your knowledge of Latour or your anxieties about to do lists waiting back at the office.
What, then, makes this network any different from any other sort of environment? If it is the case that t-shirts are to be considered media (for surely they convey meaning!), then what kind of media ecology have we created amongst ourselves, our devices, and our media? And how does that ecology differ from Latour’s conception? Are we really just using different words for the same thing?
In the next few minutes, I’m going to briefly survey each of the fields of actor-network theory and media ecology as they relate to each other. Both ANT and ME propose that individual objects exist within a complex network of associations with other objects — what might be called environments. Within that network, actions taken by individuals (actants) have impacts on others. These are the clear similarities, but they diverge in the relative weight given to nonhuman objects and the nature of the shared environment.
The essential contention of the media ecologists is that media function as environments. We find ourselves living, acting, and critiquing within the media environment whenever and wherever we create, consume, or encounter media. Too often, we ignore the shape and function of this environment in favour of addressing only the messages conveyed. This is Marshall McLuhan’s (1964) essential contention in arguing that the medium itself is the message. Here, Latourian actor-network theory can prove instructive. Latour suggests actants (most, but probably not all actants, at any rate) are mediators. They have a translatory function by which they twist and alter information and relations as they are passed from one actor to another.
Media ecology, similarly, is concerned with describing medium theory — that is, the ways in which various media (being the plural of medium), translate, transfer, and conflagrate content and form. It is clear that both approaches to analysis are integrative. They both sample widely of different technologies and agents and seek to interpret them together.
Where media ecology and actor-network theory diverge, however, is in their focus on the human or nonhuman elements of their networks or environments. Scolari (2012) notes that
For [Neil] Postman, environments structure what we can see, say, and do. They also assign roles and pressure us to play them. Media environments specify what we can do and what we cannot (p. 205)
But for Latour and the other actor-network theorists, ‘environment’ in this context would be considered too broad a collection of actants to have any meaningful role in analysis. Actors relate to one another. They are associated in such a way that they “make others do things” (Latour, 2005, p. 107). It is only through examining these relationships that environments could make any sense whatsoever.
However, Postman’s conception of an ecological metaphor for media was not just one that painted a broad background for human action. He acknowledged that elements within the environment interact. It was his insistence, not unlike Latour’s, that we trace and make explicit those interactions.
For my PhD, I conducted a study of the role of media of all kinds in shaping ideas and experiences of place, in a case study focussed on the NSW South Coast. It vacillated between ANT and media ecology in a number of ways, drawing out the connections between people, places, and media. I dealt with the concerns about how best to incorporate the idea of environments by examining the explicit role of the environment — the earthly one that lies under all of our feet. I started the study by looking at geological features of the landscape, then Aboriginal histories and stories of place which make it so richly lived prior to European arrival, and then looking at the various forms of ‘discovery’ and carving up that have taken place since. It was only after doing that that I could seriously focus on modern media production and consumption.
To me, this is where media ecology most strongly fits in the Australian context. Stan Grant raised it recently in a comment piece on ‘uncanny Australia’, where he argued for the need to dwell with the unsettling and unsettled nature of the land in this country. Linking our studies of media as environments and the various actors moving within, along, and around those environments is a serious project of worlding for Australian media scholars. Both ANT and ME contribute usefully to that goal.
References
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. London: Oxford University Press.
McLuhan, M., 1964. Understanding Media, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Scolari, C., 2012. ‘Media Ecology: Exploring the Metaphor to Expand the Theory ‘. Communication Theory. 22(2). pp. 204–225.
