B8131 - Communicating Geography (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, students will have honed the ability to communicate geographical knowledge to non-expert users. They will learn how to use approaches from human geography, geomatics and digital cartography to disseminate knowledge about social, economic and cultural issues rooted in local specificities. They will be able to write non-academic reports and adapt data to contexts including journalistic writing, videos, podcasts, cartographic visualizations, and public lectures.

Course contents

The course explores the relationship between geography and communication, examining how geographical knowledge is produced, represented, and circulated across different media and discursive contexts. Starting from classical debates on cartographic representation, the semiotics of maps, and the rhetorics of geographical writing, the course asks how geography has always been entangled with the technologies and institutions through which it speaks — and to whom. Sstudents will be able to read critically the processes through which geographical knowledge is produced, represented, and circulated across media and digital environments. They will be familiar with the field of communication, digital, and media geographies and its core concerns: the materiality and uneven distribution of digital infrastructure, the political economy of platforms and data, and the spatial politics of algorithmic and computational systems. 

Communication is understood here not merely as the transmission of spatial information, but as a constitutive force that shapes what counts as geographical knowledge, whose landscapes are rendered visible, and whose are systematically obscured.

From these foundations, the course pivots toward the digital as the dominant communicative terrain of contemporary geographical life. Students are introduced to the field of digital geographies and its central preoccupations: the uneven global distribution of digital infrastructure, the political economy of platforms and data, and the ways in which algorithmic systems produce and govern space. Rather than treating the digital as a neutral or transparent medium, the course insists on its materiality, such as the server farms, fibre optic cables, and energy grids that undergird the apparently immaterial flows of information, and on its politics, attending to how digital architectures encode relations of power, reproduce spatial inequalities, and generate new forms of territorial control. This includes work on how machine learning and artificial intelligence are reorganizing spatial imaginaries and urban governance, how networked ecologies challenge traditional distinctions between nature, technology, and society, and how digital capitalism operates through the continuous extraction and valorisation of data from everyday spatial life. Students are invited to think speculatively as well as critically, to consider not only how digital systems reproduce existing geographies of power, but also where their contradictions and vulnerabilities open space for alternative spatial futures.

Readings/Bibliography

ATTENDING STUDENTS

The bibliography will be given in class during the course

NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS

Bencivelli, S. & De Ceglia, F. P. (2013). Comunicare la scienza. Carocci.

Celata, F. (2019). Il capitalismo delle piattaforme e le nuove logiche di mercificazione dei luoghi. Territorio, (2018/86).

Certomà, C., Romano, A., Giaccaria, P., & Celata, F. (2021). Percorsi di ricerca nelle geografie del digitale. In Oltre la globalizzazione–Feedback (pp. 381-383). Società di Studi Geografici.

Frixa, E., Dell'Agnese, E., & Picone, M. (2025). Media e geografia, fra popular geopolitics e propaganda. STUDI E RICERCHE SUL TERRITORIO, 45-56.

Lazzeroni, M. & Romano, A. (2026). L'urbanesimo dell'intelligenza artificiale e la'trappola di Turing'tra processi di automazione e asimmetrie socio-spaziali. Rivista geografica italiana: CXXXIII, 1, 2026, 69-87.

Romano, A. (2022). La geografia delle piattaforme digitali. Mappe, spazi e dati dell'intermediazione digitale. Firenze University Press. Liberamente scaricabile al link: https://www.torrossa.com/it/resources/an/5303260#

Romano, A., & Lazzeroni, M. (2026). Geografia e intelligenza artificiale: spazialità, reti, narrazioni nella società algoritmica. Rivista geografica italiana: CXXXIII, 1, 2026, 5-11.

Romano, A. (2021). Pandemia e (im) mobilità: gli effetti spaziali del lockdown attraverso i Big Data delle piattaforme digitali. Rivista geografica italiana, 128(4), 5-22.

Turco, A. (2020). Fuzziness informativa e geografia della comunicazione di crisi. Semestrale di studi e ricerche di geografia, 2, 89-109.

Vanolo, A. (2026). Geografie culturali delle intelligenze artificiali: sulla loro collocazione nel tempo e nello spazio. Rivista geografica italiana: CXXXIII, 1, 2026, 12-31.

Teaching methods

The course for attending students is organized in a format that includes lectures,and seminars.

The first part alternates: (1) lectures on the theoretical foundations and critical debates of digital and media geographies (communication and cartographic representation, digital infrastructure and its materiality, platform and data political economy, algorithmic and computational governance of space, AI and spatial imaginaries); and (2) sessions on translating these debates into accessible form for non-specialist audiences (tone, register, formats: reports, longform, maps and visualisations, storymaps, infographics, video, podcasts, participatory and creative outputs).  

Assessment methods

(At least) Six exam sessions are guaranteed during each academic year. The exams will take place in January, February, May, June, July, September.

EXAM ASSESSMENT FOR ATTENDING STUDENTS

The final assessment for attending students consists of two parts: a report called "building blocks" and an oral exam. Information on the building blocks will be given in detail in class. In addition, instructions on how to develop the project, deadlines, and assessment methods will be given during the first lecture.

 

Means of verifying learning:

For attending students, the two assessment moments are aimed at verifying understanding of the theories on geographies of communication, media, and digital introduced both through the lecturer's lectures and through the preparation of building blocks. The didactic methodology adopted by the lecturer in fact envisages that the student is not a passive recipient but becomes an active part of the learning process. Therefore, an attempt will be made to stimulate the student's personal reflection on the phenomena studied, both in class, where participation in the discussion of the topics covered is considered a fundamental element, which the lecturer will use to assess the students' interest in deepening their knowledge of the geographical facts discussed, and during the examination, during which the student will be invited to propose his/her own reflections and examples aimed at explaining the theoretical aspects studied. In addition, the assessment cannot fail to take into account the student's communication skills, which require not only an appropriate knowledge of the course content but also the appropriateness of language necessary to demonstrate that they have understood and internalised the themes of the discipline.

 

NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS

Non-attending students must study the entire syllabus presented in the bibliography, and are NOT required to study the lecture slides, nor to prepare the tests that attending students will prepare in class.

Non-attending students will have to take an oral examination on topics related to the texts listed in the bibliography.

Methods of verifying learning:

For non-attending students, the examination is aimed at testing understanding of the relationship between geography and communication, and how to communicate geographical phenomena beyond the university environment. During the examination the student will be invited to propose his/her own reflections on the geographical facts inherent to the course, and on the relationship between geography and communication, also using examples from specific themes that the lecturer may propose, in order to test the student's ability to apply what he/she has learnt from the texts to be taken for the examination to practical cases. Furthermore, the assessment cannot fail to take into account the student's communication skills, which are required not only to have an appropriate knowledge of the course contents but also to demonstrate the appropriateness of language necessary to demonstrate that they have understood and internalised the themes of the discipline.

 

Students with learning disorders and\or temporary or permanent disabilities: please, contact the office responsible ( https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students ) as soon as possible so that they can propose acceptable adjustments. The request for adaptation must be submitted in advance (15 days before the exam date) to the lecturer, who will assess the appropriateness of the adjustments, taking into account the teaching objectives.

Teaching tools

The powerpoint presentations used during the lectures, descriptions of the exercises to be carried out during the lectures, and further material will be made available to students among the teaching materials on virtuale.unibo.it

Articles as part of the bibliography will be made available among the academic materials.

The professor is available by appointment (by emailing annaclaudia.martini@unibo.it) at Via Guerrazzi 20, at the Geography Department.

Office hours

See the website of Annaclaudia Martini