ABSTRACT
The media occupy a central place in any study of environmental representations. Traditionally, ‘media’ meant the ‘media of mass communication’, by which technologically based systems transmitted content (or messages) through print, broadcasting, posters or film to remote and scattered audiences. More recently, though, the idea of what constitutes ‘media’ has expanded dramatically. If media transmit content in symbolic form to an audience, then architecture, clothes, recorded music, food packaging, jewellery and skin tattoos are legitimately media. Moreover, many new media no longer conform to the established model. The convergence of television, computers, wireless technology, digital networks and mobile telephones brings patterns of use that bear little resemblance to the ‘fireside’ consumption of early radio and television programmes.
