Twitter, media ecology, information warfare: Ethical and anticipated ethical issues

Abstract

Media ecology theory is the study of media, technology, and communication and how they affect human environments. The theoretical concepts were proposed by Marshall McLuhan in 1964, while the term media ecology was first formally introduced by Marshall McLuhan in 1962. Ecology in this context refers to the environment in which the medium is used—what they are and how they affect society. Neil Postman states, “Media ecology looks into the matter of how media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling, and value; and how our interaction with media facilitates or impedes our chances of survival. The word ecology implies the study of environments: their structure, content, and impact on people. An environment is, after all, a complex message system which imposes on human beings certain ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.” Media ecology argues that media act as extensions of the human senses in each era, and communication technology is the primary cause of social change. Every communication technology (medium) has fundamental physical, psychological, and social characteristics that are basically separate and fixed. These characteristics condition how users of a medium communicate, process information, give meaning to and make sense of the world. Every communication technology conditions users to think and to speak in specific ways. In order to understand how Twitter accomplishes this, the features that define Twitter need to be identified. Twitter is a microblogging platform, a form of blogging in which tweets typically consists of short phrases, quick comments, images or links to video’s limited to 280 characters. As a platform used for communication Twitter can be described as having three key features: simplicity, impulsiveness and incivility.