Mediakartan

Mediakartan is a term used in media studies and digital humanities to describe a geotemporal, data-driven visualization of a media landscape. It is typically presented as an interactive map that links media outlets, platforms, audiences, and content flows within a defined space, such as a country, region, or city.

Core components include a geospatial layer showing outlets and platforms, network links illustrating relationships (ownership, syndication, cross-platform sharing), and temporal or topical layers that reveal trends over time. Many mediakartan implementations integrate metadata such as audience size, ownership, language, and licensing.

Data sources are diverse, including regulatory registries, media directories, web crawls, and social media data; some projects rely on official statistics or crowd-sourced tagging. Governance questions cover data quality, privacy, copyright, and representativeness; open data and transparent methods are common aims.

Applications span research, journalism training, policy analysis, and media literacy education. Mediakartan-style tools help users understand media ecosystems, monitor concentration, assess regional access to information, and illustrate how content circulates across platforms.

The concept draws on media geography and information visualization. While the exact term mediakartan appears in scholarly discourse in the 2010s and 2020s, the underlying idea of mapped media ecosystems predates formal naming. It is used variably across projects and regions.

Related topics include media geography, data visualization, and mapping. The term mediakartan does not have a single canonical definition and is often adapted to specific research or educational aims.