This is a groundbreaking collection of essays highlighting the links between contemporary society's over-reliance on both media and drugs. 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.

Author Biography

Robert MacDougall is an associate professor of communication and media studies at Curry College. He is an active member of the Media Ecology Association, the National Communication Association, and the Institute of General semantics. His research centers around the social, political and cognitive roles communication media have played throughout history.