Media life in the Anthropocene

From media evolution to the Anthropocene: Unpacking sociotechnical autopoiesis, 2024

The Anthropocene, a term encapsulating humanity's significant impact on Earth's geology, is analysed from a media and socioevolutionary lens. The exploration investigates the correlation between human socio-evolution, media, technology, and the inception and progression of the Anthropocene era. By employing a systems theoretical perspective, this research heavily draws on the theories of German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Insights from the American philosopher Levi Bryant are also integrated to elucidate the relationship between humans, technology and the Earth's geological state. It is posited that society, as we understand it, emerged with the advent of spoken language. This language-based communication system shaped cooperation within the human populace. Over time, the interplay between biology, consciousness and social structures, driven by languagebased communication in different communication media, has deeply influenced Earth's climate. The evolution of communication media has continuously expanded humanity's capacity to influence its environment. The article provides a comprehensive explanatory model, suggesting that the social structures formed by these media profoundly impact Earth's geology, challenging conventional notions surrounding the origins and implications of the Anthropocene era.

Social Sciences, 2021

This paper explores how communication and media studies have engaged with the concept of the Anthropocene in recent years. The purpose of this study is to outline the most relevant theoretical and conceptual contributions from communication science and media studies to issues related to climate change, global sustainability and the Anthropocene. A literature review on the matter shows that the field of communication research is diverse and heterogeneous, and that it puts forward different concepts and theories that deal with media as the environment or the environment as media. Environmental communication and environmental humanities frame approaches to media representations of environmental issues, whereas elemental analysis focuses on the essence of media, its material dimensions and its entanglements with social practices. From the dialogue and interdisciplinary debates among these disciplines, new approaches such as environmental media studies arise. Differences among theories have to do with the definition of media or the consideration of humanity in relation to nature or technology. In sum, communication and media studies offer interdisciplinary approaches and a nuanced understanding of our socio-natural relations, which will become more and more mediated in the years to come.

The most recent Epoch that the Earth seems to have entered is the Anthropocene. While scientists are still researching on what might mark the beginning of this Epoch, a lot of research and debate about saving the Earth’s natural state that is habitable for human beings in years to come is in limelight. Many argue that the limit up till which it was possible to conserve the Earth has passed already whereas others are keen to find solutions to slow down the process of consuming Mother Earth if not completely halting it. This talk aims at exploring the role that the Media could play and is already playing to promote the conservation of Earth in its natural state, what is also known as the Gaia. Although Media does have an impact to a certain degree, conserving the Earth is a rather huge goal to achieve on a global level. Working toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on a governmental level globally could perhaps have a much more uniform impact which can also be regulated effectively via lawful implementations in comparison to reinforcements via the media that do not necessarily have uniform outcomes.

Medium, 2018

This essay looks at the role of media technologies in the Anthropocene, the new "human epoch" in which humanity has transformed the surface of Earth and its ecosystems, while adding a new fossil layer. The essay draws from a radical new media theory called Hot and Cool Media, developed by Julia Hildebrand and Barry Vacker as a 21st century theory to account for all media, from phones to drones to space telescopes and everything in-between. The Hot-Cool concept draws from Marshall McLuhan's now outmoded concept of Hot and Cool Media.

LSE Review of Books, 2021

In The Anthropocene in Global Media: Neutralizing the Risk, editor Leslie Sklair brings together contributors to explore how the Anthropocene is reported in mass media globally. Full of rich empirical details and insightful discussions, this enlightening book deserves the attention of anyone interested in evolving public discourses of the Anthropocene, recommends Sibo Chen.

Ekfrase

Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 2019

According to geologists and Earth System scientists, we are now living in the age of the Anthropocene, in which humans have become the most important geoforce, shaping the face of the planet more decisively than all natural forces combined. This brings with it a huge and unprecedented responsibility of humanity for the future of the biosphere. Humanity's impact on the planet has been largely destructive until now, causing a rupture of the Earth System which completely changes the planetary conditions that characterized the Holocene, the generally benign period of the last 11,000 years in which human civilization as we know it has emerged and was able to flourish. In the Anthropocene these conditions can no longer be taken for granted. On the contrary, humanity itself will have to become responsible for the preservation of the biosphere as its ultimate life support system. This means that its influence on the Earth System has to become a constructive one, among other things by inventing a cleaner and more sustainable modus vivendi on the planet. In this article it is claimed that such a transformation presupposes the invention of a global noosphere that allows humanity as a planetary collective to perceive and monitor the Earth System and interact more intelligently and sustainably with it. The response-ability required for taking responsibility for the Earth System presupposes the existence of a global noosphere that can both support a permanent collective awareness of our embedding in and critical dependence on the biosphere and function as a collective action platform. Based on a Stieglerian diagnosis of our current predicament, a case will be made for the huge potentials of digital media for our future task of caring for the earth.

2018

The Anthropocene Media Project is an on-going research project on how the Anthropocene (the geological concept created to measure and name human impacts on the Earth System) is represented in the mass media in local languages all over the world. So far, data has been collected from online searches of newspapers, magazines and other news media websites from around 100 countries/regions by about 50 volunteer researchers. The data is being analyzed by years of publication, numbers and types of articles. The paper concludes with some observations on the role and responsibility of the mass media in interpreting science for various publics.

Medium, 2019

Scientists say we have entered the Anthropocene, the new epoch of human-caused change on Planet Earth. The newest fossil records suggest our 24/7 electriFed, industrialized civilization is now generating a new geological and ecological epoch on Earth. We are literally transforming the ecology and biosphere of our planet. Climate disruption is merely one part of the Anthropocene, along with polluted air, nuclear waste, mountainous landFlls, plasticized and acidiFed oceans, sprawling cities of concrete and asphalt, and even species extinction events. It's all eMecting a new fossil layer that spans the globe. We are just beginning to grasp the long-term planetary eMects of the Anthropocene.