Over the past two decades, human geographers have taken an increasing critical interest in the mass media. This development reflects the growing recognition that the media are centrally implicated in both (a) the constitution, experience, and representation of space, place, landscape, and environment (in short, geography) and (b) the mechanisms by which geography in its various incarnations, in turn, is implicated in social processes. Of all the mass media, television is seen as perhaps centrally important in these regards; for, despite the rapid growth in penetration and usage of the Internet and notwithstanding the ongoing cultural, economic, and political significance of newspapers, magazines, and radio, it is widely believed that for the bulk of the world's population, television is the most socially material mass medium.

Geographers ...