Media theory is a theoretical framework that reexamines the relationships among media technologies, human beings, society, and the environment. In contemporary media studies, ecology and the posthuman are especially important keywords. Media ecology treats media not as isolated tools but as ecosystems, and it examines their technological, social, and cultural interactions. A posthuman perspective, by contrast, relativizes human-centered thinking and seeks new relations between humans and nonhumans such as animals, machines, and environments. It involves a reconfiguration of the body, materiality, and the concept of the subject.
This theoretical development can be understood as a movement from media environmentalism toward an ontology of relations. Marshall McLuhan’s insight that media are environments is one starting point. From there, a line of thought extends through Donna Haraway, Matthew Fuller, and Karen Barad, each of whom reframes the relation between media, humans, nonhumans, and environment in increasingly complex ways. Fuller emphasizes the materiality and politics of media technologies and adopts a stance that moves back and forth between theory and practice. His media ecology is closely connected to contemporary art practice and presents theory itself as a kind of media practice. Barad, through an ontology of relations, questions how knowledge is formed and how responsible intervention becomes possible.
Media theory is also a transdisciplinary field shaped by environmental crisis and the rapid development of AI, both of which unsettle human-centered views of media. At the intersection of ecological and posthuman perspectives, its central task is to redefine the ties among media, bodies, environments, and technologies.