The Dictionary of Human Geography

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 ordinal– each individual is allocated to one

selected from an exclusive list of rank-

ordered categories;

 interval– in which individuals are assessed

on a continuous quantitative scale; and

 ratio– in which the values on a quantitative

scale can be relatively evaluated.

Thus, for example, 10 million people live in

either Birmingham (UK) or London – which

is a nominal allocation; London is bigger than

Birmingham, which is ordinal; London has 9

million residents and Birmingham 1 million,

which is interval; and London is nine times

larger than Birmingham, which is ratio. Data

from all forms of measurement can be ana-

lysed quantitatively, but different procedures

are applied to different measurement types (cf.

categorical data analysis;general linear

model;regression). rj

media Cultural technologies for the com-

munication and circulation of ideas, informa-

tion, and meaning. These are usually taken to

include various mass communication media

such as books, newspapers, radio, television,

film and now various forms of ‘new media’.

In the past two decades, research on media-

related topics has flourished inhuman geog-

raphy, without adding up to a theoretically or

methodologically coherent agenda for media

research. In cultural geography, media

texts are often taken as a resource for analysing

various forms ofrepresentation(ofland-

scapes,places,identities,citiesetc.). In

economic geography, there is also a bur-

geoning literature on media production, dis-

tribution and consumption, given a further

boost by the growth of digital media econ-

omies and culture industries. Nevertheless,

the inherentspatialityof media processes

has attracted surprisingly little attention from

geographers. Early work by Pred (1973)

reconstructed the geographies of pre-tele-

graphic information circulation through news-

papers in the USA in suggestive ways, but his

main focus was on using thesediffusionpro-

cesses to recover the emerging system of inter-

dependencies between cities, rather than

providing a close reading of the media reports

themselves. More recent work in human geog-

raphy has focused on the forms of social inter-

action that different media help to constitute

(Adams, 1998). But in the main it is scholars

working outsidegeographywho have pro-

vided most insight into the spatialities of

media and communications. Thompson

(1995) provides the clearest articulation of

the study of media with the central concerns

ofsocial theory, and in the process develops

an analysis of the spatial and temporal consti-

tution of social relations and institutions. He

argues that different media and communica-

tions practicesuncouple time and space, enab-

ling the transmission of symbolic forms over

time and space without physical transporta-

tion of objects; and they thereby enable new

forms ofsimultaneous co-presencebetween spa-

tially and temporally distanciated subjects and

contexts (see alsotime–space distanciation).

This type of analysis implies thinking of

‘media’ as a process of mediation operating

‘wherever human beings congregate both in

real and in virtual space, where they commu-

nicate, where they seek to persuade, inform,

entertain, educate, where they seek in a multi-

tude of ways, and with varying degrees of suc-

cess, to connect one to the other’ (Silverstone,

1999, p. 4).

As in other disciplines, media research in

geography is prone to overestimate the causal

powerof media practices, and to make func-

tionalist assumptions about the degree to

whichsocial formationsare held together

by the mass-mediated circulation of values

over integrated political, economic and cul-

tural territories (seefunctionalism). There

is a tendency to assume thatsubjectivityis

media-dependent, and to presume that either

the content of media texts or the patterns of

ownership and control of media production

and distribution are highly determinate in

shaping patterns of belief, knowledge and

practice. Media research in geography could

benefit from taking seriously Garnham’s

(2000, p. 5) claim that ‘the central question

underlying all debates about media and how

we study them concerns the way in which and

the extent to which humans learn and thus how

through time identities are formed and actions

motivated’. Combining Garnham’s question of

whetherandhowpeople learn through their

engagements with media practices with

Silverstone’s idea of media asprocesses of medi-

ationpoints towards a more coherent agenda

formediaresearch:one that investigates how

the spatio-temporal organization of media

practices helps to distribute different possibil-

ities of agency and communicative competency

(Couldry, 2006) (a project that also bears dir-

ectly on recent discussions ofpublic geog-

raphies, since a crucial question concerns

precisely how publics areproduced). cb

Suggested reading

Barnett (2003); Couldry and McCarthy (2004).

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_M Final Proof page 450 1.4.2009 3:19pm

MEDIA