{"id":11119,"date":"2020-10-16T08:24:59","date_gmt":"2020-10-16T13:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=11119"},"modified":"2020-10-16T08:25:08","modified_gmt":"2020-10-16T13:25:08","slug":"streaming-medias-environmental-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/10\/16\/streaming-medias-environmental-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"Streaming media’s environmental impact"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cross-posted with the EcoCultureLab blog.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Media+Environment<\/a> <\/em>has just published another article in its \u201cStates of Media and Environment<\/a>\u201d series, and this one should be of broad interest to environmental educators, media scholars, and environmentally concerned media users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStreaming Media\u2019s Environmental Impact<\/a>\u201d draws attention to an unpopular but inescapable issue: the adverse environmental effects of streaming media. Four of the brief interventions in this multi-part article focus on streaming media\u2019s carbon footprint, estimated by some to be 1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (The Shift Project 2019). This startling figure is rising at a calamitous rate as more people around the world stream more media at higher bandwidth\u2014now exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Another factor in streaming media\u2019s environmental impact is even less welcome: the deleterious effects of higher levels of electromagnetic frequencies that media corporations\u2019 turn to fifth-generation (5G) wireless technology would exacerbate. These effects are well documented yet almost universally ignored. Despite all these findings, the notion abides that digital media are immaterial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Laura U. Marks introduces the research challenges involved in calculating the carbon footprint of streaming media and suggests actions consumers and media makers can take to mitigate this environmental threat. Joseph Clark discusses the implications of digitizing huge amounts of archival film and connects material histories of news film production, distribution, and preservation or disposal to contemporary issues of digital storage, streaming, and energy use, using the newsreel archive as a case study. Jason Livingston\u2019s contribution expands on his droll and disturbing video lecture, which presents a speculative app for mobile phones that tracks streaming, correlates it to energy use and CO2 emissions, and suggests methods to mitigate usage. Denise Oleksijczuk introduces scientific research on the health and environmental impacts of high levels of electromagnetic frequencies and suggests ways, including creative practice, to break through the resistance to these findings among telecommunications companies, governments, and the public. Lucas Hilderbrand focuses on best practices in teaching: how to educate our students about these impacts, and how teachers can resist increasing pressures to use streaming-based pedagogical media. Many communities around the world already rely on low-tech media, of necessity, and are often extremely innovative in their use (Marks 2017). However, network and media corporations are aggressively marketing devices and streaming platforms in both \u201cdeveloped\u201d and \u201cdeveloping\u201d regions (Cisco 2020). Many of the latter regions depend on fossil fuels and cannot afford to prioritize renewable energy and efficient systems. Thus streaming media\u2019s carbon footprint is not just a First World problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many thanks to the co-authors, peer reviewers, and to our editorial and production teams at the Carsey-Wolf Center and the University of California Press!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the article here: https:\/\/mediaenviron.org\/article\/17242-streaming-media-s-environmental-impact<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And others in the series here: https:\/\/mediaenviron.org\/section\/1582<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted with the EcoCultureLab blog. Media+Environment has just published another article in its \u201cStates of Media and Environment\u201d series, and this one should be of broad interest to environmental educators, media scholars, and environmentally concerned media users. \u201cStreaming Media\u2019s Environmental Impact\u201d draws attention to an unpopular but inescapable issue: the adverse environmental effects of streaming media. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[196,689701],"tags":[628608,628610,628432,628609,628605,628606,628607,4478,520682,628611,243430],"class_list":["post-11119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecoculture","category-media_ecology","tag-carbon-footprint","tag-data-centers","tag-digital-media","tag-ecological-footprint","tag-environmental-impact","tag-industrial-ecology","tag-laura-marks","tag-media-ecology","tag-mediaenvironment","tag-pedagogical-media","tag-streaming-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2Tl","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5132,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/08\/01\/performance-research-on-ecology-issue\/","url_meta":{"origin":11119,"position":0},"title":"Performance Research ‘On Ecology’ issue","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"CALL FOR PROPOSALS PERFORMANCE RESEARCH 17.4 (AUGUST 2012): \u2018ON ECOLOGY\u2019 PROPOSAL DEADLINE: 1st OCTOBER 2011 (see below for details) Issue Editors: Stephen Bottoms, Aaron Franks, Paula Kramer How do we live on earth? Over the last several years, a broad and growing range of theatre events and performance processes have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1090,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/06\/18\/case-for-online-publishing\/","url_meta":{"origin":11119,"position":1},"title":"case for online publishing","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Mount Holyoke College political science professor Douglas Amy makes a good case for publishing online in this piece in today's Inside Higher Ed. Amy is the author of three previous books, The Politics of Environmental Mediation (Columbia University Press, 1987), Behind the Ballot Box (Greenwood, 2000), and Real Choices\/New Voices\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8302,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/06\/23\/cinema-ecology-the-death-of-carbon-capitalism\/","url_meta":{"origin":11119,"position":2},"title":"Cinema, ecology, & the death of carbon capitalism","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 23, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Rice University's\u00a0Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences\u00a0(CENHS) has made my Cultures of Energy talk available on their YouTube channel. It's a longer version of the material I presented\u00a0at the SCMS \"Post-Cinema\" panel. Here's the abstract: This paper thinks through the intersections of three developments: (1) the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/25_cwFE2vKI\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2894,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/03\/08\/cfp-rethinking-time-ecology\/","url_meta":{"origin":11119,"position":3},"title":"cfp: Rethinking Time & Ecology","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"CALL FOR PAPERS: Special Issue of Environmental Philosophy THEME: Temporal Environments: Rethinking Time and Ecology Details: GUEST EDITORS: Jacob Metcalf (UC Santa Cruz) and Thom van Dooren (University of Technology, Sydney) Place and space have received substantial attention in environmental philosophy in recent decades. Theorists from a variety of fields\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5293,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/09\/09\/political-ecology-position\/","url_meta":{"origin":11119,"position":4},"title":"Political Ecology position","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"We're been given the green light to announce the following tenure-track position in Environmental Studies and Geography. I'm chairing the Search Committee. Please pass it on to anyone you think will be interested. Review of applications will begin November 15.\u00a0 The Department of Geography and the Environmental Studies Program at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14332,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2025\/11\/27\/terra-invicta-author-forum-open-access-info\/","url_meta":{"origin":11119,"position":5},"title":"Terra Invicta author forum & open-access info","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 27, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Cross-posted from UKR-TAZ. I'm happy to share the news that Terra Invicta: Ukrainian Wartime Reimaginings for a Habitable Earth, the first English-language book-length anthology of wartime Ukrainian environmental humanities writing (and art), is out now -- and that it's available as a\u00a0fully open access\u00a0downloadable file thanks to McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11120,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11119\/revisions\/11120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}