A materialist media ecological approach to studying urban media in/of place

Abstract

Despard develops an approach to studying the interactivity of media and place together based on theories of an inclusive, materialist media ecology. Her qualitative research implies an attention to what different sites and communication technologies can do as opposed to what they mean, as well as to the relations of production and circulation that enable and sustain those capacities. Baines presents here a strategy for the development of site- and media-specific methods capable of both describing and critically exploiting the interactivity of place, practice and technology. Finally, the chapter presents research on the affordances and constraints of Instagram in relation to the visibility of a contested public place in Glasgow, Scotland.