Media Ecology of Soil: Communicating through New Media and Evaluating Its Effects.

This abstract is subject to much revision....  How the communication process works is critical to explaining issues in soil science and conservation such as decreasing student enrollment, or the persistently low, 40% adoption rate in response to national soil conservation programs.  Cognitive, social and economic factors are also involved in people not hearing, or choosing not to act on, soil science information.  But it is equally clear from the success of such diverse media as television shows, Youtube, social networking sites, environmental documentaries, museum exhibits, and outdoor learning programs that information presented in a variety of ways or for a variety of learning styles can reach new audiences, in new ways, with new impact.

The purpose of this presentation is to concisely review major media theories that apply to the communication of soil and soil science information to people outside of the soil science field. A modified Jakobson communication model is used to underscore that sender, medium, message, and receiver are separate parts of the communication process, and to highlight the coconstitutive nature of meaning, that is, the strong role of social contexts in learners and listeners deciding how to "decode" or understand a message, or whether to read it "provisionally" or "oppositionally," adding new meanings into it. 

Questions to ask about soil perceptions in media thus include: What soil information reaches people? Who presents it and with what end? Is this information on soils and soil science explicitly presented (eg through speakers or textbooks) or part of other broader communication such as environmental science courses, or a community garden movement? What "message" or meanings are taken up, as opposed to the meanings put in, or intended? How do these understandings combine soil information with other issues of concern to the individual, such as ethics, values, social identity, emotions, community, other fields of knowledge, and environmental, economic and social interests and concerns?

Major features of communication theory that apply to understanding societal perceptions of soil will be illustrated by specific reference to recent "new media" and conventional media on soil.  For purposes of this session, new media is defined as any non-traditional learning media used by soil and related sciences, such as textbooks, classroom-based curricula, and outreach "speakers."  New media include not only non-print media such as film, video, TV, and the internet, but new forms of social communicative activity such as online social networking sites, listserves and threaded discussions, and physically embodied forms of learning and communicating about soil such as farm- and garden-based K12 curricula, farmer's markets, conferences, "crop mobs"  and "convergences", community gardening, farm apprenticeships, and both mainstream and informally circulated "food movement" literature.