What are media materials? How are media material to geography? As digital media increasingly pervade physical and social environments, geographic interest in media has expanded across subdisciplines and specialty groups. Within human geography, media have been addressed as means of educational and professional communication; vectors for geospatial visualization; elements of affective assemblages and atmospheres; channels of surveillance and control; representations of culture; tools for placemaking; spatializations of thought and memory; territorial fixes for capital; producers of urban spaces and rhythms; publics or commons; facilitators of social and communal life; and more.
This session aims to host papers which address the diverse materialities of media objects and technologies—digital and otherwise—and, in doing so, bring into closer dialogue the breadth of geographic scholarship on media. Ultimately, the session is interested in papers which provide insights to the question: What constitutes 21st-century geographic attention to media objects and processes? Where, how, and why do media emerge and engage with space? We are seeking theories, genealogies, and analyses of media spaces, places, locales, environments, and ecologies at a variety of sites and scales. Papers working with novel (or, novel to geography) media concepts, case studies, and methodologies are especially encouraged.
Please submit an abstract (approx. 250 words) to jsaindon@uky.edu. Review of abstracts will begin on Oct. 18th. Abstracts that are selected for this session will be notified by Oct. 25th. The AAG deadline for abstract submission is Oct. 31st.