Amid the devastation of a worldwide pandemic, catastrophic wildfires, and expanding political crises, the 22nd Convention of the Media Ecology Association (MEA) was held under the theme of “Dystopic Futures: Media Ecology in an Algorithm Society” to discuss the emerging dystopia that seems to haunt the present and foreshadow the future. Hosted by Brazil’s Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro), the conference was scheduled to meet in person in Rio but the continued threat of COVID-19 pushed the proceedings from interpersonal space into the online environment we know as “Zoom.”
For those readers unfamiliar with the term, “media ecology” is an approach to the study of human communication that aims to make us more aware and more critical of the technologies that form our environment and socialize our patterns of thought, feeling, and interaction. Given the broad approach of media ecology, the...
University of California Press