ABSTRACT
This chapter explores journalistic mapping and its significance in our current period of geopolitical and environmental uncertainty. Mark Monmonier details the historical growth in map use by the 'press' in the UK and North America. As well as their use in the press, maps have become embedded within a widening array of methods of reproduction, transmission and consumption. As communication technologies have evolved to allow more effective use of graphic images, maps have increasingly been used to provide spatial information, promote place knowledge, and explain geographical and environmental processes. Comprehensive studies of news media cartography have been relatively limited in number and the issue of the socio-political role of maps (e.g. in geopolitical discourse) has been largely neglected until recently. The myth of the map as an objective representation of an external reality has been eroded by the critical turn in cartography.
