Media, Communication, and the Environment in Precarious Times

The seminal 1983 "Ferments in the Field" collection made limited reference to environmental issues and concerns. Considering communication media and technological artifacts as both nature and culture and, more specifically, through defining media as both infrastructural environments and content, we discuss how challenges brought about by environmental change can inform contemporary media and communication research and environmental communication. The materiality of e-waste, which has resonance for cultural, political, economic, and geographic analyses, is used as an illuminating case in point. We link the implications ensuing from the e-waste issue with the roles mediation and communication of environmental narratives play, and how they can be informed by such "medianatures," as well as geopolitical considerations.