Drugs & Media: New Perspectives on Communication, Consumption, and Consciousness

We have developed into a culture that is over-reliant upon pharmaceutical and recreational drugs; where drugs are incessantly advertised and promoted to us via our mass media. Like drugs, communication media alter the way we interact with the world; they direct our attention in various ways, sometimes enabling certain behaviors and experiences, and prohibiting others.

The contributors to this cutting-edge collection apply media ecological concepts to consider how drugs function as communication technologies; literally media in and for the human sensorium. In these essays, drugs are considered as communication media in a practical sense, not merely in the metaphorical way they tend to be discussed in the popular press. Media and drugs are thus conceived as communicative tools that enhance and/or inhibit physical, social and symbolic experience - our ways of seeing and being in the world. Drugs & Media: New Perspectives on Communication, Consumption and Consciousness is the first book to examine this parallel, promoting a critical awareness of the significant impact of drugs and media on individuals, society and our wider human culture.

Robert MacDougall is a Professor of communication and media studies at Curry College on the outskirts of Boston, MA. He is an avid member of the Media Ecology Association, and continues to work toward articulating a biological approach to understand the human-technology interface. His most recent investigations incorporate the use of EEG technology in an effort to better understand some of the interactions, effects and side-effects associated with everyday multimedia use.