Oppressive Heat: How Media Make Sense of Deadly Atmospheres

How do you sense that a heat wave is dangerous? In recent decades, digital media have supplanted broadcast media’s cultural primacy, reshaping people’s experiences of the weather. Whereas television once transmitted weathercasts to a mass audience, digital weather apps now target forecasts to individuated users. 

This presentation examines how meteorology’s shift from broadcasting to pointcasting has transformed the social life of extreme heat. Political-economic developments have given rise to new aesthetic practices remediating how publics experience the conditions of planetary overheating.

All are welcome.

About the Speaker

Sasha Crawford-Holland is Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Arts at Vanderbilt University. Sasha’s research examines the relations between media, violence, and social justice, and has been published in JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Feminist Media Histories, Film History, Television & New Media, and the London Review of International Law, among other venues.