Communicative Ecology - History and Usage

History and Usage

The concept of communicative ecology is derived from Altheide’s “ecology of communication” (1994;1995). Altheide developed this concept to examine the mutually influential relationships between information technology, communication formats and social activities, within the context of people’s social and physical environments, as they define and experience them. The concept is influenced by McLuhan’s (1962) research on media ecology, which demonstrates that new media and technology can influence communicative content, and also the symbolic interactionist perspective of communication as embedded in context (Barnlund, 1979). Altheide considers ecology of communication to be a fluid construct that can be used as a frame to investigate the ways in which social activities are being created and modified through the use of technologies that, in turn, give rise to new communication formats. He is particularly interested in the relationship between social activities and technologies for surveillance and control.

The communicative ecology concept has been further developed for use in studies of information and communication technologies (ICT) initiatives in developing nations (Slater, Tacchi & Lewis, 2002). A guide to the study of communicative ecologies using the ethnographic action research method, developed with the support of UNESCO, has spawned a proliferation of empirical research (Tacchi et al., 2007) (Tacchi, Slater & Hearn, 2003). Many of these investigations have focused on ICT for development projects associated with community technology centres and local information networks in South Asian and African nations (Slater et al., 2002;Slater & Tacchi, 2004;Pringle, Bajracharya, & Bajracharya, 2004;Sharma, 2005;Nair, Jennaway & Skuse, 2006;Rangaswamy, 2007). In these studies, local community members are often engaged as active participants in a research and project development process that provides opportunities for them to gain the ICT literacy skills necessary to create locally meaningful content (Subramanian, Nair & Sharma, 2004;Tacchi, 2005a, 2007;Tacchi & Watkins, 2007). Many of these research activities investigate and support interventions that aim to alleviate poverty (Slater & Kwami, 2005), educate (Subramanian, 2005) and promote the digital inclusion necessary for citizens to actively participate in civic life and have their voices heard (Tacchi, 2005b;Skuse & Cousins, 2007, 2008;Skuse, Fildes, Tacchi, Martin & Baulch, 2007;. Some studies have reported on the use of a particular ICT, for example community radio (Tacchi, 2005c) or mobile phones (Horst & Miller, 2006;Miller, 2007), in relation to broader communication patterns.

More recently, the communicative ecology framework has been extended in studies of the nature of media use to support social networks in urban villages and inner-city apartment buildings (Foth & Hearn, 2007). This paper introduced the concept of dimensions to the communicative ecology model. Button and Partridge (2007) used the model to examine the online communicative ecology of neighbourhood websites. The model has also been used to investigate how students communicate and reflect on their learning (Berry & Hamilton, 2006).

A special issue of the Electronic Journal of Communication showcased the versatility of the communicative ecology approach (Hearn & Foth, 2007). In this issue, Allison (2007) looked at the communicative ecology from the perspective of the individual, whereas Wilkin, Ball-Rokeach, Matsaganis and Cheong (2007) used a panoptic perspective to compare the ecologies of geo-ethnic communities. Peeples and Mitchell (2007) used the model to explore the social activity of protest. Powell (2007) focused on a particular medium, public internet access, in an urban context. Shepherd, Arnold, Bellamy and Gibbs (2007) extended the concept to attend to the material and spatial aspects of the communicative ecology of the domestic sphere.

The term “communicative ecology” has also been used in other studies with various interpretations. Interactional sociolinguists use the term to describe the local communicative environment of a particular setting in which discourse is contextualised. Using methods drawn from linguistic anthropology, their research begins with a period of ethnography in which a rich understanding of the local communicative ecology is formed. Discourse is then analysed in relation to this ecological context (Gumperz, 1999). Roberts (2005) describes a communicative ecology as comprising the identity of participants, the topics of communication and the ways in which things are communicated, including tone of voice, directness, etc. Beier (2001) draws on Hymes’ (1974) work in ethnography of communication and uses the concept to understand the range of communicative practices of the Nanti people as a system of interaction.

From an applied linguistics perspective, McArthur (2005) describes a communicative ecology as embracing the nature and evolution of language, media and communication technologies. He uses the term to discuss the interactions between the world’s languages and communication technologies. Wagner (2004) uses the term to refer to the deep structures of meaning and communicative action that human language shares with other species, particularly the bonobo. In cultural studies of terrorism, White (2003) uses the term to describe the interchange of signs within interacting networks of individuals and collectives.

In their study of computer-mediated communication in the workplace, Yates, Orlikowski and Woerner (2003) draw upon Erickson’s (2000) work on genre ecologies to suggest a communicative ecology can be identified by the types and frequencies of communicative practices, such as email threading activities. Their version of communicative ecology is influenced by members of a workplace engaging in common activities, the length of time over which interaction takes place, whether communication media is synchronous or asynchronous and members’ linguistic or cultural background.

There is not a single, agreed upon communicative ecology model, rather, this section highlights that there are various approaches to understanding and applying the model in various contexts. Furthermore, concepts that bear some similarity to communicative ecology include actor-network theory (Latour, 2005), activity theory (Nardi, 1996) the communication infrastructure model (Ball-Rokeach, Kim & Matei, 2001) and the personal communication system (Boase, 2008).