Introduction: The intellectual roots of media ecology

As an emerging field of interdisciplinary study for understanding media, communication, and culture, media ecology invariably attracts varied interpretations or reactions as to what it is or does. The above episode, for example, is part of the folklore that has been circulating among some media ecologists since the 1970s. Embedded in the response in the story is an interpretation that, echoing the raising environmentalism of the 1970s, media ecology is the study of the interaction among various forms of media in the struggle for their own niche and survival in a complex ecology of social forces. Such is a good initial conception of what media ecology is because it points to one of media ecology's major concerns, that is, the complex symbiotic relationship among the media and, on another level, between media and the various forces in society. In his remark to the members of the Media Ecology Association, an independent professional association, Strate (1999) offers this interpretation of media ecology: