My last two blog posts have focused on how cultural items
such as literature and artwork can not only give us more detailed insights into
geographical events such as societal collapse and changing climates, yet
provide us with comprehensive ideas into what daily life was and is like amongst
various cultures around the world. In light of this I now want to consider what
relationship the media has firstly with the subject of geography in general,
and then what role it plays towards cultural representation...
What is meant by the
term ‘media’?
When we use the term ‘the media’ we are referring to means of communication such as radio, televisions, magasines, internet pages
etc. The scope of these communication opportunities means that what is covered by
the media therefore has the ability to influence people extremely widely.
Geography and the
media – what is their relationship?
The media is arguably an integral part of geographical study
as it is the platform that the subject’s image is thrown into the public
domain. The relationship between geography and the media is seen most clearly
during times of natural disaster, like the extensive coverage of the Boxing Day Tsunami, The Haiti
Earthquake etc. However, not to be overlooked are the portraits of places the
media provides as backgrounds to its stories or even as features and
programs themselves.
To illustrate this presentation of geography in the news,
take the three pictures below taken from the BBC News website surrounding coverage
of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. Firstly the images of the devastation clearly shock
and engaged the audience showing them the scale of the geographical disaster involved,
but secondly other attempts are made on the news to explain the geography
behind how this earthquake actually happened.
Classroom Activity Ideas
To begin a topic like this I would simply begin with a
starter activity that encourages the students to collectively mind map all the
types of media they are aware of. Questions could then be directed to get students
discussing ideas such as which media they think is the most accessible to various age groups and
why. Following this, to show them exactly how much geography is included as
part of the media, I would find a range of website, newspaper, and magazine articles
that cover a range of geographical topics from weather reports, natural disaster updates and
reports, fact files on countries to travel to etc. I would scatter these resources
around the classroom and get the students to feed back what types of
geography topics they think are covered in the news and what they tell us as an audience.
This way they will hopefully begin to see the scale of coverage the subject receives.
So far I have started to just simply think about the
relationship the media has with geography. However in my next blog I now want
to start considering whether this is a distinctly positive relationship, or if
there is more to the story...
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