Media Rurality

Name: Media Rurality
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ISBN: 9781478029793

Patrick Brodie, Darin Barney

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English

Duke University Press
14 April 2026

Media studies; Rural communities; Environmental science, engineering & technology

Media Rurality investigates the centrality of rural places and people within the media systems and technologies that shape daily life in and across rural and urban settings alike. From the boglands of Ireland to data centers in the Oregon countryside to the homemade media systems of rural Tanzania, the contributors to this volume show how rural territories are highly mediated, technologized spaces profoundly enmeshed with global capitalism and colonialism. Approaching the study of rurality through a materialist lens that foregrounds infrastructure, this collection shows how rural spaces often bear the environmental brunt of capitalist development while being relegated to the economic and cultural periphery.

Contributors. Christopher Ali, Patrick Bresnihan, Patrick Brodie, Darin Barney, Jenna Burrell, Jordan B. Kinder, BurÇ KÖstem, Cindy Lin, Emily Ng, Lisa Parks, Anne Pasek, Esther Peeren, Nicole Starosielski, Ishita Tiwary, Hunter Vaughan, Ayesha Vemuri, Megan Wiessner, Assatu Wisseh

Edited by: Patrick Brodie, Darin Barney
Imprint: Duke University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 572g
ISBN: 9781478029793
ISBN 10: 147802979X
Pages: 350
Publication Date: 14 April 2026
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Media Rurality / Patrick Brodie and Darin Barney 1 Part I. Extractive Mediations 1. Green Data Capitalism and Its Rural Extractions / Megan Wiessner, Anne Pasek, Nicole Starosielski, and Hunter Vaughan 41 2. Scenes of Extraction: Mediating Rurality, Wilderness, and Hinterland in Dutch and Chinese Film / Emily Ng and Esther Peeren 65 3. Imperial Wireless: Energetic Mediation at Marconi’s Connemara Station / Patrick Bresnihan and Patrick Brodie 88 4. Mediated Extraction: The Production of Dark Ruralities in the Atlantic World / Assatu Wisseh 113 Part II. Practicing Rurality 5. Mediating the Periphery: Metabolism and Technicity on the Outskirts of Istanbul / BurÇ KÖstem 133 6. Domestic Solar Media in Rural Tanzania: Toward an Energy-Media Matrix / Lisa Parks 157 7. Hong Kog in Siliguri/dhulabari: Exploring Media Objects and Border Towns / Ishita Tiwary 179 8. The Preservation of Embodied Masculinity in Rural Tech-Altered Workplaces / Jenna Burrell 200 Part III. Political Ruralities 9. Gas Can Imaginaries: On the Politics of Combustion, Anti-Urban Resentment, and Playing Indian at the 2022 Freedom Convoy / Jordan B. Kinder 227 10. Where the Market Dares Not Tread: Mapping Rural Broadband in the United States / Christopher Ali 252 11. The Virtual Fire / Cindy Kaiying Lin 277 12. Embankment Economies, Soaking Ecologies, and the Conservation Zone of Kaziranga / Ayesha Vemuri 296 Acknowledgments 323 Contributors 329 Index

Patrick Brodie is Assistant Professor in the School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin. Darin Barney is Professor of Communication Studies at McGill University.

Reviews for Media Rurality

“This remarkably original collection offers a much needed intervention, centering the role of rural spaces to media and infrastructure. The way the contributors engage with issues of uneven connections and energy transitions, and with rural entanglements within global supply chains and planetary mines, is superb.”—Rahul Mukherjee, author of Radiant Infrastructures: Media, Environment, and Cultures of Uncertainty “A rural of omnidirectional connectivity; sites of roiling metabolisms of extraction, resistance, and media intensiveness; a rurality of emergence and theoretical complexity. This volume expands the boundaries of rural spaces, lives, and politics as media ruralities that are peopled and place-based, enduring and vital, and essential for research addressing contemporary debates in global media studies.”—Rafico Ruiz, author of Slow Disturbance: Infrastructural Mediation on the Settler Colonial Resource Frontier