Q1. What is "sense of place" and what does it have to do with ecological media?

Sense of Place as Indicator

Vendor curios on the hill overlooking the Spanish
colonial town of Alamos, Sonora.

If we recognize that sense of place is important to the human (and so the environmental) condition then the next question may be: How is sense of place an indicator for ecological media, which may be defined as mass communications about the environmental (and so the human) condition?

The answer lies both in content and delivery:

Content is the stuff that is delivered. An alienated society, one without much of a sense of place, would likely communicate its alienation both through art and journalism, in its broadest context. In the ecological sense, we might consider indicators, for example, to be doomsday movies where, rather than aliens or corrupt politicians, earth's forces themselves wreak havoc. On the other end of the spectrum, an increase in environmental reporting related to community may also be an indication of the relationship between sense of place.

Delivery is the tool or platform through which the content is made available, and delivery options are multiplying in type and speed-of-access in an exponential manner: websites, video, instant messaging, twittering, cell and satellite phones — on top of traditional (and waning?) methods such as books, newspapers, broadsides, and even good old-fashioned community meetings. Here, sense of place becomes relevant in the aesthetic of the delivery mechanism, certainly, but also in the geographic location of the delivery. With more mobile devices, we can find our sense of place while getting our media fix more easily than ever.

I wonder, though, if that's all backwards. Is sense of place an indicator for ecological media? Perhaps the better question is: Is ecological media an indicator for sense of place? Certainly they're related, but I believe the media itself more directly indicates where we're at, from a sense-of-place perspective.

Of course, there are some pretty cool sustainability and quality-of-life indicators worth investigating, too, such as:

Next: Q2