Google Earth: Outreach and Activism

by Catherine Summerhayes

Overview

In order to be able to communicate and engage with each other via new communicative spaces such as Google Earth, we need to understand as much as possible about how they work as cultural texts: how and why we make them and how we respond to them.

Launched in 2005, Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program, mapping the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery and aerial photography. By addressing the sociopolitical issues at stake in society's use of social websites, the author provides the first ever extended close reading of Google Earth as a powerful player in the communication realm of social media.

By grounding the context of its military pre-history, its construction, its links to other similar world-making sites such as Google Maps and how it is perceived critically by social scientists, it is imperative to understand how social networking and information sites work in socio and geo-political contexts if society is to use these sites effectively and for the public good.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501320026
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/25/2016
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Catherine Summerhayes is Adjunct Fellow in the School of Literature Languages and Linguistics, at the Australian National University, Australia. Her major research areas are in documentary film studies, new media theory and performance studies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1
An Introduction

Chapter 2
'What is Google Earth?'

Chapter 3
Using Google Earth – who, how and why

Chapter 4
'Crisis in Darfur': a Google Earth Outreach case study in affect and compassion

Chapter 5
Human Rights Activism via Remote Sensing – an extended case study of activism in 'Crisis in Darfur'

Chapter 6
In Conclusion: Humanist Trajectories in Google Earth

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

How are we to think through 21st century visual regimes that have come to supplement perspective and realism? Summerhayes goes beyond analyses of the new cartographies as tools of authority, exploring instead the new affective connections afforded by Google Earth, new ways of being human. Vital reading for those who work to make data social.” —Sean Cubitt, Professor of Film and Television, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

From the Publisher

How are we to think through 21st century visual regimes that have come to supplement perspective and realism? Summerhayes goes beyond analyses of the new cartographies as tools of authority, exploring instead the new affective connections afforded by Google Earth, new ways of being human. Vital reading for those who work to make data social.

Sean Cubitt