Media ecology can be described as the study of new media forms and how they relate to modern culture and communication. Since this concept is centered around the constant evolution of media, it is important to discuss how media ecologies have impacted the post-cinema era, as new digital mediums hare now been integrated into numerous movies and television shows. Film theorist Francesco Casetti views the development of digital media as a positive for films and television by “creating new trajectories and allowing cinema to continue to live and not just survive as it adapts to a new landscape” (Casetti, 19).

The evolution of digital media has led to the creation of a new horror/thriller movie subgenre where storylines are told entirely through digital applications like FaceTime and text messaging. Not only is this type of filmmaking relatively cheap to produce, but it can create a new source of tension as the events are occurring in apps that are normally used by the audience on a daily basis. Some examples of this practice are Missing (2023), which takes place entirely on a screen recording of a teenage girl’s laptop, and Unfriended (2014), a film that follows an unknown intruder joining a Skype call.

Credit: MISSING Official Trailer by Sony Pictures Entertainment

While this style of media is commonly seen with horror projects, it has also proven to be adaptable to a wider variety of genres. For instance, the American TV series Modern Family has one episode titled “Connection Lost” where the entire family communicates with each other through social media and video calls. This utilization of digital media is unique to this one specific episode as the rest of the series is filmed in a mockumentary style, but since storytelling through social media and phone calls is an easily accessible format, production teams are allowed to be more experimental without having to take a major risk from a budget perspective.

-Olivia Arenburg

Reference: Francesco Casetti, ‘Relocation’, The Lumiere Galaxy: Seven Keywords for the Cinema to Come, pp. 17-42