The Comparison Research Of Joshua Meyrowitz And Neil Postman’s Media Thought

With its development and growth worldwide, media ecology has already become the dominant issue in the academic field. However, Chinese researchers are late to start in the relevant field, still in their infancy and lack academic scope, depth and achievements. Hence, it is of great theoretical value in running through and interpretation for the media ecology. As the distinguished representatives, Neal postman and Joshua meyrowitz play an important role in the development of media ecology and Joshua meyrowitz is Neal postman’s student. They both have made important progress in media ecology exploring their media theory will play an active and boost role in the development of Chinese media ecology. As important contemporary media environment science researcher, Neil Postman and Joshua Meyrowitz environmental studies on the development of the media has a huge contribution to the formation of their own unique media environment theory and perspective.Postman is the representative figure of "technical pessimism", he unequivocally criticize the impact of electronic media and the deeply worrying; Relative to his teacher, Meyrowitz ’s is more positive, he inheritance McLuhan’s theory of medium and combine the Goffman’s "scene theory", put forward its own media environment theory.Two ideas of media have much in common. First, they are the most important representatives of the media environment, their theory is the result of McLuhan’s media thought; Secondly, their evaluation of electronic media and print media is mutually; Finally, their thought of the electronic media’s influence on children’s view is similar. At the same time, there exist obvious differences between their medium thoughts. First, in terms of technical ideas, postman’s attitude to technology is distinctive but Meyrowitz is not a completely technological determinist; Secondly, in terms of the idea of electronic media, postman has the tendency of extreme pessimism and Meyrowitz’s view is more objective; Finally, in the aspect of humanism, postman explore analysis from the macroscopic Angle, and Meyrowitz’s view come from the microscopic view. There are many reasons for the difference between their theories, such as the research methods and different perspective, academic style, their different social background.Their different research provides a lot of thought for our today’s media environment research.