Digital ecologies

Abstract

In an era of mass extinction, climate emergency, and biodiversity collapse, what role do digital media have in securing liveable futures? To what extent are digital media mitigating or intensifying environmental crises? And what theoretical, empirical, and methodological frameworks are needed to make sense of emerging digital ecologies? In a context where digital media are reshaping the futures of conservation, environmentalism, and ecological politics – for better and for worse – Digital Ecologies confronts the political and ethical stakes of these developments. The collection draws together leading social science and humanities scholars, in order to examine the growing entanglement of animals, plants, and ecosystems with digital media technologies. The book’s original empirical chapters explore novel mediated encounters between humans and other animals: from exercise apps where users race wild animals to livestreams of chickens and lobsters, and digital sound recordings of extinct species. Authors interrogate new forms of governance and surveillance arising with digital media – as satellite-tagged birds monitor the high seas or digital smart forests and seed databases reconfigure life in new ways. More broadly, the book explores the political and ethical potentials new assemblages of human, animals, technologies, and environments as social media creates complex opportunities for environmental activism and new ecologies of software emerge. Beginning with the editors’ own agenda-setting introduction and closing with three chapter-length provocations for the future of research in the field, the book offers both an overview and intervention into the rapidly expanding field of digital ecologies.