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List of contents
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Why media and water?
Part 1 Communication
1 Media templates for representing water
2 Deluge and Tempest in the BBC archives
3 Socially mediating water for digital hydro-citizenship
Part 2 Culture
4 Story-ing water: Liquidity, bubbles, storage
5 Remembering and re-mediating women in drought
6 Forgetting water: Developing a flood memory app
Part 3 Perception
7 The cultural value of water and water’s impact on cultural values
8 Riparian media for marginal communities
9 Waterproofing media and memory for flood risk
Conclusion
References
Index
About the author
JOANNE GARDE-HANSEN is Professor of Culture, Media and Communication at the University of Warwick, UK. She is co-editor of Save As…Digital Memories (2009) with Andrew Hoskins and Anna Reading, author of Media and Memory (2011), co-editor of Geography and Memory (2012) with Owain Jones and co-author with Kristyn Gorton of Emotion Online: Theorizing Affect on the Internet (2013).
Summary
As flooding, drought and water scarcity become more pronounced due to climate change, so the way in which these events are presented in the media assumes greater significance. In particular, the media plays an important role in shaping the public perception and understanding of water issues, and debates around extreme weather events more generally.
Joanne Garde-Hansen’s book offers a sustained and comprehensive exploration of media representations of water. Drawing on a wide range of media – including newspapers, digital, photography, radio, television and video, as well as empirical research on media and memory – she examines how drought, flooding and water management have been portrayed in the media, both historically and in the contemporary world. The use of the media by water institutions to manage public perceptions and the use of digital media by the public to engage with water companies is also included. A particular feature of the book is an examination of water and gender in developed nations. One of the first books to look at media representations of water, this pioneering work provides valuable insights for both scholarly and professional water research.
Foreword
An exploration of media representation of water issues.
Additional text
Narrowing the focus of study is required by almost every field of science to respond to the distinctiveness of its research questions. But that is a strategy that often makes it difficult to perceive the whole picture and the deepest relationships between its elements. This book overcomes that limitation by drawing comprehensive connections, that come to light thanks to the author’s trained eye. And, when revealing them, the book becomes fundamental by unveiling levels of meaning and knowledge that would otherwise remain hidden.
