[Live Video] Book Recommendation: Amusing Ourselves to Death

In the 27th video of Adam Niven' s #FBLiveVideoChallenge for Media Theology Adam suggests a book that you just have to read if you want to explore this space: Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.

[Live Video] Transformers and Proclaimers: What's that all about?

This is the fourth video of Adam Niven' s #FBLiveVideoChallenge for Media Theology. In it Adam expands on the terms Transformers and Proclaimers as they are presented in Woods and Patton's Prophetically Incorrect: A Christian Introduction to Media Criticism.

[Live Video] Who's shaping who? Christian Media vs Secular Media

This is the third video of Adam Niven' s #FBLiveVideoChallenge for Media Theology. In it Adam gives his response to a viewer question of Who is shaping who? Is Christian Media shaping Secular culture or vice versa.

The answer might not be what you expect.

So you're a Christian Leader loving social media. But you're only preaching to the choir.

So in the first post of this series I laid out the three most likely positions when it comes to social media platforms.

1. Living it: you've got plenty of social profiles and presence and see it as an excellent tool in your ministry.
2. Ambivalence: Not really into it, but you've maybe got a social profile on a platform or two.
3. Opposed to it: Don't have any social profiles and it drives you a little wild to see how often others are always on their phones.

And in this final post it's time to dive into how to rethink what it means to be living it.

Because if you want to do more than preach to the choir, or engage in long protracted debates, you need to stop seeing social as a tool for spreading a message. 

Are you a Christian Leader Ambivalent About Social Media? Perhaps you should be more respectful.

So in the first post of this series I laid out the three most likely positions when it comes to social media platforms. And number two was ambivalence.

Not really into it, but you've maybe got a social profile on a platform or two.

Which ultimately can become quite a disrespectful stance to have. Just like any social situation, there are rules to abide by on social media platforms. And one of the key rules that enables social media platforms is that you need to be social.

Time, our most precious resource, even if we don't know what it is.

Time is no doubt now one of our most precious commodities. We're inclined to buy our time back at whatever we determine to be a reasonable rate. Yet, it was St Augustine who said in his Confessions:

"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: If I wish to explain it to one who asketh, I know not"

But even if we cannot understand exactly what it is, it has a distinct impact on how we view the world and our place in it.

Are you a Christian Leader and Not Interested in Social Media? You're failing the next generation.

If you're a Christian leader then your stance towards Social media is probably going to fall into one of three places:

1. Living it: you've got plenty of social profiles and presence and see it as an excellent tool in your ministry.
2. Ambivalence: Not really into it, but you've maybe got a social profile on a platform or two.
3. Opposed to it: Don't have any social profiles and it drives you a little wild to see how often others are always on their phones.

Well I'm going to start at the bottom first...don't worry, we'll be working our way to the top over the next couple of weeks...but if you're opposed to social media, it may just be you're to much in love with your the way you want the world to be.

#mcprobe :: it started here

Being too young to have been exposed to McLuhan in his heyday, my discovery came a number of years ago was kind of like pulling a loose thread on a woolen sweater. Like many, my first exposure was to his most infamous aphorism

the medium is the message

but without notice, it became: the medium is the massage; the medium is the mess-age; the medium is the mass-age; the tedium is the message; and  the tedium is the mass-age. All of a sudden I had my hands full of loose wool and McLuhan was saying "See, it's a unicorn".

M.E. Monday #3

This week, here's a little gem from Neil Postman:

"New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thought develops" (Technopoly, 1992).

M.E. Mondays

So I have decided to fire up the old blog again now that I have a bit more time to dedicate to it. And I'm going to start it up with M.E. Mondays.  M.E. Mondays are not all about me...but rather about Media Ecology....essentially a way of exploring the world that seeks to understand how our media work a bit like ecological environments to shape our world...

So each Monday I'm going to give you a bit of something to provoke your thinking from those who fit within the interdisciplinary field of Media Ecology. I'll throw a few of my own thoughts alongside each post to help get you engaged. So here is M.E. Monday #1.