1. Dr. Susan P. Mains Geography
GE21001 Dynamic Human Worlds Media and Geopolitics, Lecture 9 Blog:
Dr. Susan P. Mains
Geography

2. Media and Geopolitics Lecture Outline: Access to media
Media and knowledge
Forms of media

3. Understanding Media A key source of information
Provide depictions of many places, political events that may be far removed physically
Varying access to different forms of media

4. Media and Knowledge
Various forms of popular media may help to shape opinions and policies
Media images also reflect viewpoints
Media may be used to challenge popular ideas and/or stereotypes
Different kinds of media may be accessible in different kinds of ways
E.g., print media (newspapers)
Lined to Benedict Anderson’s idea of an ‘imagined community’
Mass produced, collective information
Prior to this: town hall meetings, travel writing, novels
Many elitist (e.g., literacy needed)

9. Marcus Garvey, UNIA
--Black transnationalism,
--Pan-Africanism
Robert S. Abbott,
African American Newspaper

13. Radio Connects with oral traditions of storytelling
One of the mpst accessible media forms
Public announcements
Serial programmes
Later, increasingly interactive
e.g., call-in shows
on-location reports

14. Radio Recognizabe formats
News, public announcements, entertainment (musicals, dramas)
What happens when these are challenged?
War of the Worlds, Orson Welles

15. War of the Worlds Broadcast http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs0K4ApWl4g
Transcript

17. The Aliens Have Landed…?
Political context
Anti-communism in US and Europe
Aliens as metaphors for feared ‘others,’ borders
Growing US imperialism
Emerging technologies
Growing interest in travel possibilities, Mars
H. G. Wells (1898), science fiction
immigration

18. The Aliens Have Landed…?

23. The Cold War & Media Newspapers and radio, later tv
‘Loose lips sink ships’
Strategically ‘fictional’ factual stories
Fake military sites—e.g., through photography

25. Operation Fortitude
-World War II
’deception operation’

26. Photography & Documentary Film
Photography: can also be used to challenge caricatures
Social documentary
Links to visual anthopology
War photography
‘Indigenous’ cultures
E.g., Nanook of the North

29. Robert Flaherty, 1921