Map Cultures, Misuses, and GI - A Primer of GIS: Fundamental Geographic and Cartographic Concepts - page 225

to consider all maps as propaganda, with exceptions possibly for purely tech-
nical maps of infrastructure. This type of relativism about the use and poten-
tial of propaganda GI and maps leads to negligence and disregard for the
subtle, yet deceitful ways that propaganda GI and maps inf luence our under-
standing of things and events in the world.
Privacy Protection and Surveillance
In many areas of the world, increased surveillance has become much more
commonplace and accepted. In many settings people have come to even find
a degree of safety in the surveillance, but some people have begun to raise
questions about the amount of data collected by government and private
agencies and what happens with this data. As with information collected by
product registration forms, applications, or using the phone or mail, which
can be aggregated using common identifiers—for example, in the United
States the Social Security number or house address—GI can also be com-
bined to create more detailed analyses.
Most people would like to consider information about what and when
they do things of everyday life including shopping, walking the dog, going
for a run, and going to meet friends as private. New technologies make it
easier to track movements and collect these kinds of individual-level informa-
tion. Public safety concerns may make the collection of this information nec-
essary for particular situations, but the widespread collection of individual
data and its uncontrolled storage and use concerns many people. With these
new technologies, many discussions around the world are unfolding about
how to adequately protect privacy, yet at the same time ensure that adequate
information is collected for law enforcement and defense purposes. The
In-Depth What Is Propaganda?
Propaganda , for most people, is the systematic manipulation of information to
fit particular ideological, political, or social goals.
Thinking about the role and creation of maps in propaganda, we might
want to start out with the insight that propaganda maps rely on distortions.
Some are blatant and some are subtle, but these distortions, when critically
examined, manipulate the GI or map to create a representation that sets out to
convince that it, regardless of distortions, is the correct representation of that
aspect of the world.
The quiet persuasiveness of GI and cartography is what makes it such a
powerful form of deceitful manipulation. Packaged as effective communica-
tion, many people may not be able to assess the distortions. Ultimately, the
propaganda of GI and maps have little to do with scientific aspects of geo-
graphic representation and cartographic representation, but are based in par-
ticular social and political interests advanced through the map.