Abstract
In a media saturated world of globalization, information flow and knowledge economies, an interesting paradox exists: geographic literacy appears to be on the decline while geographic information is on the rise. In this introduction to a collection of essays on geographies of the media, we explore this paradox and use Baudrillard's (1994) work on Simulacra and Simulation to argue that increased mediated information does not produce more meaning, but rather leads to a catastrophe of meaning and the medium. Drawing from McLuhan's axiom, "the medium is the message," we posit that with more mediated information there is less meaningful information and as such we need to address geographic media literacy as a primary mode through which to address geographic literacy.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 175-182 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | GeoJournal |
Volume | 74 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 2009 |
Keywords
- Crisis of representation
- Geographic education
- Information literacy
- Information technology literacy
- Simulacra
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geography, Planning and Development