Map communication model: Difference between revisions

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== Overview ==

By the mid-20th century, cartographers<ref>[http://www.metapedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Spo7 The Roots of Twenty-First Century Critical Cartography in Twentieth Century Critical Theory], retrieved 3 September 2008.</ref> as [[Arthur H. Robinson]] and others had begun to see the map as primarily a communication tool, and so developed a specific model for map communication, the map communication model (MCM)<ref name="JWC01"> Crampton, J.W. (2001). "Maps as Social Constructions: Power, Communication, and Visualization". In: ''Progress in Human Geography''. 25, 235-252 </ref>. This model can be grouped with the other major [[Communication theory|communication model]]s of the time, such as the Shannon-Weaver and Lasswell models of communication. The map communication model led to a whole new body of research, methodologies and map design paradigms<ref>Andrews, S.K. (1988). "Applications of a Cartographic Communication Model to a Tactual Map Design". In: ''The American Cartographer''. 15, 183-95.</ref>

One of the implications of this communication model<ref name="CC08"> Richard Donohue (2008). [http://geographer.situatedlaboratories.org/critical_cartography.php Critical cartography]. Retrieved 3 September 2008. </ref> is a clear separation between [[cartographer]] and user, whereby the map was seen simply as an “intermediary between the cartographer and the user”.<ref name="JWC01"/> endorsed an “epistemic break” that shifted our understandings of maps as communication systems to investigating them in terms of fields of power relations and exploring the “mapping environments in which knowledge is constructed”.<ref name="JWC01"/> This involved examining the social contexts in which maps were both produced and used, a departure from simply seeing maps as artifacts to be understood apart from this context.<ref name="CC08"/>

A second implication of this model<ref name="CC08"/> is the presumption inherited from [[positivism]] that it is possible to separate facts from values. As Harley stated: Maps are never value-free images; except in the narrowest Euclidean sense they are not in themselves either true or false. Both in the selectivity of their content and in their signs and styles of representation maps are a way of conceiving, articulating, and structuring the human world which is biased towards, promoted by, and exerts influence upon particular sets of social relations. By accepting such premises it becomes easier to see how appropriate they are to manipulation by the powerful in society.<ref name="CC08"/>

== History ==