With contributions from academics specializing in geography and media studies, the Routledge Handbook of Media Geographies summarizes the recent developments in the field and explores key questions and challenges affecting various groups, such as women, minorities, and persons with visual impairment. It considers geographical aspects of disruptive media uses such as hacking, fake news, and racism. Written in an approachable style, chapters consider geographies of users, norms, rules, laws, values, attitudes, routines, customs, markets, and power relations. They shed light on how mobile media make users vulnerable to tracking and surveillance but also facilitate innovative forms of mobility, space perception and placemaking. Structured in four distinct sections centered around "control and access to digital media," "mass media," "mobile media and surveillance" and "media and the politics of knowledge," the Handbook explores digital divides and other manifestations of the uneven geographies of power. It also includes an overview of the alternative social media universe created by the Chinese government.
Media geography is a burgeoning field of study that lies at the intersections of various social sciences, including human geography, political science, sociology, anthropology, communication/media studies, urban studies, and women and gender studies. Academics and students across these fields will greatly benefit from this Handbook.
Paul C. Adams is Professor of Geography at the University of Texas at Austin. His research is situated at the intersection of media studies, communication theory and human geography. His work considers how socio-spatial perceptions, representations, actions and infrastructures are intertwined through mediated communications.
Barney Warf is a Professor of Geography at the University of Kansas. His research and teaching interests lie within the broad domain of human geography. His research includes telecommunications and political geography viewed through the lens of political economy and social theory. He edits Geojournal and co-edits Growth and Change.