On Disciplining Media Ecology

The author undertakes research into conceptions of media ecology held by some of its leading scholars and disciplinary identity formation. Identifying media ecology as a field of study that stresses either network, nodal features or coherence of content, conceptualizing media ecology as a network seems to correspond more closely with pedagogical practice while an emphasis on primary theorists bears out in the classroom. Becher and Trowle's analysis of disciplines suggest that media ecology is an emerging discipline not yet a fully realized one. Viewing media ecology comparatively against identity studies of other emerging disciplines leads to the same conclusion. That author concludes that what marks media ecology as an emerging discipline is not its conceptual closure but the inter-relatedness of its ideas.