Abstract Drawing on examples of Bitcoin and climate disinformation, this article demonstrates why Big Tech algorithms have a significant environmental impact and how media literacy educators can respond. Big Tech algorithms reinforce the economic models of surveillance and carbon capitalism, which are dependent on two forms of extractivism: data harvesting and resource … [Read more...] about Algorithms and Climate: An Ecomedia Literacy Perspective
Just Look Up!: The Sixth IPCC Report, Polar Temperature Spikes, and the Slap Seen Around the World
Don’t Look Up, the Oscar-nominated Netflix film warning of the dangers of an impending planetary crisis, was repeatedly criticized because its satire of US politics and media was seen as a heavy handed and melodramatic caricature. But the spectacle of Will Smith’s live TV assault on Chris Rock during the 94th Academy Awards ceremony and how it obscured alarming climate news, … [Read more...] about Just Look Up!: The Sixth IPCC Report, Polar Temperature Spikes, and the Slap Seen Around the World
Don’t Look Up! Getting the climate conversation started in Media Literacy
We cannot solve the climate crisis if we don’t discuss it. And the fossil fuel industry knows this. Big Carbon understands that if society takes the climate crisis seriously, it’s the end of their business model. To delay climate action and regulation of their industry, Big Carbon plays the long game to generate climate silence and inaction through public relations and … [Read more...] about Don’t Look Up! Getting the climate conversation started in Media Literacy
Beginnings…Connections…Intersections: A Conversation with our Guest Editors
Antonio Lopez, Theresa Redmond and Jeff Share answer questions from Karen Ambrosh and Marieli Rowe How did your interest in Ecomedia Literacy evolve? Jeff: I have always been passionate about the environment and environmentalism, from annual backpacking in the Sierras to photographing for the TreePeople, a local environmental organization. However, it was not … [Read more...] about Beginnings…Connections…Intersections: A Conversation with our Guest Editors
The Journal of Sustainability Education Editorial Overview
Foreword from JSE Editor-in-Chief, Clare Hintz: The Journal of Sustainability Education marks its tenth anniversary year with an issue on Water Literacy (published in March) and this issue, Ecomedia Literacy. From a dream of several Ph.D. students at Prescott College (U.S.), we have come a long way to an internationally known, peer-reviewed journal, publishing two to … [Read more...] about The Journal of Sustainability Education Editorial Overview
Ecomedia: The Metaphor that Makes a Difference
Abstract: Media is an ambiguous metaphor that changes meaning depending on how it’s used by educators. Typically media are only characterized by how they represent reality and communicate ideas. Consequently, the metaphor assumes a taken-for-granted meaning that media are immaterial with no environmental impact. Instead, the term ecomedia signals media’s inherent … [Read more...] about Ecomedia: The Metaphor that Makes a Difference
Bella Gaia and the Pedagogical Power of the Overview Effect: An Interview with Kenji Williams
Abstract: Bella Gaia (Beautiful Earth) is a performance that combines a world-music inspired soundtrack with projected graphics, animations and video to educate about climate change. A hybrid of art and science, the nonlinear performance is an example of an emerging form of ecomedia in which remote sensing media are used to transform audiences to experience Earth as an organic, … [Read more...] about Bella Gaia and the Pedagogical Power of the Overview Effect: An Interview with Kenji Williams
Fake Climate News: How Denying Climate Change is the Ultimate in Fake News
Download full article pdf >> After the 2016 US-presidential election and Brexit referendum, fake news emerged as a quintessential democratic problem that media literacy was tasked to solve. The broad social concern about fake news acknowledges that the public sphere is a kind of commons that requires tending, and reminds us of the human (and civic) need for … [Read more...] about Fake Climate News: How Denying Climate Change is the Ultimate in Fake News