著者

山田 晴通

出版者

The Association of Japanese Geographers

雑誌

地理学評論 Ser. A (ISSN:00167444)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.59, no.2, pp.67-84, 1986

被引用文献数

3

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It is often argued how important and crucial roles communication media play in the social phenomena of the modern world. Nowadays, communication media seem to have become one of the most attractive research topics for researchers of any social science. However, it is not the case with human or social geographers.<br> Quite a few geographers refer to keywords like communication, information flow, and télématique, but only few are positively trying to build up "Geography of Information." "Geography of Information" is yet to come. In the present stage, no standard method nor common direction is established for it.<br> One of the factors which prevent the development of "Geography of Information" is lack of sufficient amount communication media studies in geography, which would provide fundamental knowledge upon the spatial distribution of information. Up to now, geographers have produced not a few research papers upon communication media, but these works arescattered over varied sub-fields of geography. They have been done under different research interests, and have only limited relations with each other.<br> This review article describes the present stage of communication media studies in geography, and tries to search a way to establish common property and common direction for them. In this review, some foci are set upon such subjects as nodal or functional region studies using telecommunication flow data, diffusion studies of broadcasting stations as innovations, and several approaches to newspaper industry. Almost 30 research papers are referred, and more than 50 of them are in English or French.