As part of an email interview for PaideiaTV, a publication of the European Observatory of Children’s Television, Lance Strate discusses the difference between media literacy and media ecology:

They really are two very different kinds of concerns. Media Literacy is often characterized as a movement, and is specifically concerned with education and schooling, and with practical approaches to educational and media policy, to teaching and curriculum development, to developing mastery in media production and/or instilling a critical approach to media reception. Media ecologists share these concerns, and media literacy has traditionally been seen as part of the media ecology tradition, although many of those who are associated with media literacy seem to be unaware of the foundations laid by media ecologists such as Marshall McLuhan, Edmund Carpenter, Walter Ong, Neil Postman, among others, during the 1950s and 1960s.

Media ecology, on the other hand, is not a movement, but rather an intellectual tradition with roots in antiquity, one that starts to take form in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and coalesces following the Second World War. Media ecology casts a much wider net than media literacy, as the concept of “medium” and “media” is used in the braodest sense to include all forms of technology and technique, all codes, symbol systems, and forms of language and communication, and all kinds of contexts, situations (e.g., the classroom as a medium) and systems. Media ecologists often prefer a philosophic approach to understanding these phenomena, engaging in forms of cultural history as well as extrapolations concerning the future of communication, consciousness, and culture. While there is a wide range of interests and methodologies associated with our field, many media ecology scholars focus on the big picture in their scholarship, in contrast to individuals more closely associated with media literacy.

While we have a strong common ground in our interest in media education, media ecologists would particularly emphasize understanding the history, nature, and effects of different media and technologies, understanding how speech is what defines us as a species, how the rise of cities and complex societies is intimately tied to the development of writing, how the modern era begins with the invention of the printing press with moveable type in 15th century Europe, and how electronic media such as television and the internet have moved us into an entirely new era of history… [Read more at Lance’s blog.]