New Books Network Patrick Brodie and Darin Barney eds., "Media Rurality" (Duke UP, 2026)
May 3, 2026
Featuring Patrick Brodie, Irish scholar of rural media and infrastructure; Darin Barney, Canadian communication theorist of rural mediation; Burç Köstem, researcher on Istanbul peripheries and infrastructural politics; and Megan Wiessner, researcher on digital tech, democracy, and green data capitalism. They explore data centers and Marconi radio, green data capitalism and FarmBeats, mega-projects around Istanbul, and how infrastructure ruralizes landscapes.
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How The Book Started At A Montreal Workshop
- The project began from conversations and a 2022 workshop in Montreal to gather geographically diverse scholars on rural infrastructure.
- Patrick Brodie described recruiting contributors across Ireland, Canada, US, Indonesia, and Tanzania to surface recurring themes.
Global Media Systems Are Rooted In Rural Sites
- Inverting the phrase to media rurality highlights that global media systems themselves are rural phenomena.
- Darin Barney stresses that infrastructures (cables, data centers, satellites) traverse and depend on rural sites for materials, energy, and siting.
Avoid Simplistic Rural Pathologies
- The book resists rural pathologization and romanticization by revealing political diversity and contested struggles over land and resources.
- Patrick links recent fuel protests and diverse rural coalitions to infrastructural and economic pressures, not simple stereotypes.
