General Description

Nowadays we live in a rapidly developing world that is overflown by a variety of spatially related information – geo-information. A constantly increasing number of maps, visualisations, images, video and audio, datasets, surveys and documents describing specific places/locations are created and shared by companies, governments, charities, journalists, organisations and educators. We also use geo-information in everyday life, for example when we are looking for places where we’d like to go on a trip or holidays. In this situation we use information portals to track routes on the map but we’re not always aware of the fact that we are the active users of so called geo-media.

Geo-media (or in full “geographical media”) are up-to-date interactive technologies using multimedia to present the spatial information in the form of digital maps and georeferenced photos, videos and texts. We all know the most popular examples of geo-media such as: Google Maps, Google Earth or satellite navigation applications that provide geo-spatial positioning. As geo-media we can also consider spatial applications for mobile devices and applications which combine digital maps and social media, i.e. Flickr, by adding geotagged images. Therefore geo-media can be simply defined as “any form of (digital) media that incorporates or portrays geographical (location-based) information. This includes for example news, multimedia, telecommunications and social networks.”

The term includes also more professional solutions such as satellite remote sensing (SRS) data and software as well as GIS (geographical information systems) data and software. These technologies are used not only to present data but also to combine it and analyse it in detail.