López, Antonio

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Antonio Lopez, PhD, is a curriculum designer, educator, trainer, and theorist with a research focus on bridging ecojustice and media literacy. He is a founding theorist and architect of ecomedia literacy and creator of the ecomedialiteracy.org website, which curates education resources. He has written numerous academic articles, essays, and four monographs: Ecomedia Literacy: Integrating Ecology into Media Education; Greening Media Education: Bridging Media Literacy with Green Cultural Citizenship; The Media Ecosystem: What Ecology Can Teach Us About Responsible Media Practice; and Mediacology: A Multicultural Approach to Media Literacy in the 21st Century. He is lead editor of the Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies. Currently he is Professor of Communication and Media Studies. Resources and writing are available at: https://antonio-lopez.com/

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 16
  • Publication
    Integrating Information Literacy in a Communication Writing Course
    (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2020) López, Antonio; Piotto, Livia; Macias-Gutiérrez, Elizabeth
  • Publication
    Greening A Digital Media Culture Course: A Field Report
    (2013) López, Antonio
    As a professor of undergraduate media studies, I have attempted to bridge media education and ecoliteracy by developing an experimental media education approach called Ecomedia Literacy. The framework attempts to balance the strengths of media studies with the concerns of education for sustainability. This paper documents a specific case study in which I introduced sustainability themes into an undergraduate digital technology and culture course by using the Ecomedia Literacy framework.
  • Publication
    Ecomedia: The metaphor that makes a difference
    (2020) López, Antonio
    Media is an ambiguous metaphor that changes meaning depending on how it’s used by educators. Typically media are only characterized by how they represent reality and communicate ideas. Consequently, the metaphor assumes a taken-for-granted meaning that media are immaterial with no environmental impact. Instead, the term ecomedia signals media’s inherent environmentality. This essay introduces our special issue on ecomedia literacy by exploring how the ecomedia metaphor affords a deeper awareness of media’s environmental footprint.
  • Publication
    Ecomedia Literacy. A Quickstart Guide
    (2024) López, Antonio
  • Publication
    Testing the Effectiveness of an Ecomedia Literacy Environmental Education Lesson
    (2024) Lo Iacono, Ludovica; López, Antonio; Visintin, Emilio Paolo
    The growing environmental crisis requires innovative educational strategies to promote pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. In this context, ecomedia literacy, which combines ecological education and media to enhance pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors, stimulate sustainable actions, and foster critical thinking, represents a promising approach. In this research, we evaluated the effectiveness of an ecomedia literacy-based lesson. Participants (N = 106) were randomly assigned to either an ecomedia literacy group or a control group. Those in the ecomedia literacy group first attended the lesson and then completed a questionnaire to assess pro-environmental attitudes and behavioral intentions, while those in the control group completed the questionnaire before the lesson. The lesson focused on the use of plastic water bottles, and attitudes and intentions were assessed both in general toward the environment and specifically regarding the consumption of plastic bottles. The intervention was not successful in changing intentions or attitudes toward plastic bottles, but some facets of pro-environmental attitudes were better in the ecomedia literacy group than in the control group. The limited effectiveness of the lesson indicates the need for significant changes in content and future strategies to better achieve sustainability goals.
  • Publication
    Ecomedia Literacy Bringing Ecomedia Studies into the Classroom
    (Routledge, 2023) López, Antonio
    The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the methodology of ecomedia literacy and demonstrate how ecomedia studies can be incorporated into any educational setting. Ecomedia literacy is defined as the ability to evaluate and critically engage how everyday media practice enables us to live regeneratively within Earth’s ecological parameters for the present and future. The primary analytical heuristic for this approach is the “ecomediasphere,” which analyzes “ecomedia objects” (gadgets, texts, platforms, etc.) from four different perspectives: ecoculture, political ecology, ecomaterialism, and lifeworld. An ecomedia object is something that has agreed upon properties, but its meaning and use change according to environmental context.
  • Publication
    Algorithms and Climate: An Ecomedia Literacy Perspective
    (2022) López, Antonio; Frenkel, Olivia
    Drawing on examples of Bitcoin and climate disinformation, this article demonstrates why Big Tech algorithms have a significant environmental impact and how media literacy educators can respond. Big Tech algorithms reinforce the economic models of surveillance and carbon capitalism, which are dependent on two forms of extractivism: data harvesting and resource extraction. To encourage a holistic environmental analysis of algorithms, ecomedia literacy’s four zone approach enables an investigation from the perspectives of ecoculture, political ecology, ecomateriality, and lifeworld. For media literacy educators, the challenge is to develop curricula and methods that address these different standpoints, which can include critical media literacy, design justice, civic media literacies, news and misinformation literacies, and ethical algorithm audits.
  • Publication
    Bella Gaia and the Pedagogical Power of the Overview Effect: An Interview with Kenji Williams
    (2020) López, Antonio
    Bella Gaia (Beautiful Earth) is a performance that combines a world-music inspired soundtrack with projected graphics, animations and video to educate about climate change. A hybrid of art and science, the nonlinear performance is an example of an emerging form of ecomedia in which remote sensing media are used to transform audiences to experience Earth as an organic, living organism. Bella Gaia’s creative director and creator, Kenji Williams, discusses this new form of educational experience. The violinist, composer and filmmaker incorporates a neuro-science driven methodology to create “immersive live theater, mixed reality, and interactive data visualization.”