Concept
human ecology
Applying to human relations the analysis used for plant and animal communities; competition creates order and the cultural order limits that competition (Park).
Human ecology is the attempt to apply to human relations the kind of analysis used for plant and animal communities. For Robert Park, human society results from the limitation of a competition-based “biotic” order by the cultural order; this limitation works on economic, political and moral levels.
In Chicago the approach was applied to the city: people and functions compete for space in the city and districts emerge. Ernest Burgess’s ring model in The City (1925) is the best-known example; Louis Wirth’s 1938 article notes that institutions such as the press and publishing centres concentrate in cities. The concept has been criticised: the ring model was developed for American cities and has been found too simple. Its importance for communication is that it allows the spatial distribution of media and communities’ access to information to be thought about in an ecological frame.
Example
Mapping the neighbourhoods where a city’s local newspapers are distributed and comparing them with population density would be an ecological reading (a hypothetical example).