Engagement, communication and context: the success of the human-map nexus

The communication paradigm was adopted by cartographic researchers in the 1960s as a means of describing and explaining the nature of mapping; the interaction amongst cartographers, their maps, and map users; and the way in which maps ‘work'. This paper considers some of the shortcomings of the cartographic communication paradigm, but proposes that enhancing it by incorporating modifications to its rigid linear and component-based model is useful, in trying to explain the success of maps in human society. The enhancements discussed all contribute to a deeper investigation of the ‘context' of cartographic activity, the model space which the traditional graphical representations of cartographic communication occupy. Thus, we present an exploration of several topics which it is felt could be incorporated into a deeper analysis of context: the concept of affordances; the role of cognition in human engagement with geospatial data and with maps; the nature of communication through the map medium; and the adoption of carto-pragmatics, a human-centred approach to map use. It is concluded that there are inherent relationships among these topics and each suffuses the total cartographic communication system, and each of its previously identified elements, therefore affecting the definition of ‘context’.