GSR_3 Geospatial Science Research 3. School of Mathematical and Geospatial Science, RMIT University December 2014 Geographic Content Analysis of the Cartoons of Gallipoli 1915 Antoni Moore 1 , William Cartwright 2 and Christina Hulbe 1 1 School of Surveying, University of Otago, New Zealand 2 School of Mathematical and Geospatial Science, RMIT University, Australia Email: tony.moore@otago.ac.nz; william.cartwright@rmit.edu.au; christina.hulbe@otago.ac.nz Abstract Artifacts such as cartoons contain explicit and implicit evidence of the geography of war. As such, they can offer political, reactive and personal perspectives that are not directly represented in conventional war maps. Maps and cartoons can complement each other in providing a more complete window into war geography. Cartoons relating to the Gallipoli campaign of 1915 were collated and coded for three classes, each of which contained a number of categories: a) the perspective (propaganda, satire, personal); b) the type of geographic evidence embodied in them (text, map, graphic, symbol, metaphor); and c) the country of origin. Category counts and correlation analysis were used to identify associations between category classes and between categories. It was found that Australian and Turkish cartoons share a distinctive pattern of characteristics, that embedded maps are a common feature of propaganda cartoons, and that graphics are associated with personal and satirical cartoons. Satirical cartoons also employ metaphor. Associations among categories within classes are also found, for example, symbolism and metaphor are positively correlated while propaganda is negatively correlated with satirical and personal perspectives. It was reasoned that these patterns emerge through various imperatives, including a political need to deploy a geographic shorthand (i.e. maps) to convey complex geographic concepts, a personal literal rendering of the war environment (i.e. through graphics) and the professional cartoonist’s use of symbolism and metaphor to communicate complex concepts. Keywords: Cartoons, geographic evidence, perspective, analysis, World War I Introduction Cartoons and cartoon-like rendering, as seen in official posters and personal sketches, have been used to represent, comment on and motivate matters of war as in other aspects of life. As such, they are highly effective communication media and like other forms of art, have persuasive, documentary and emotive power. Maps, as supreme recorders and communicators of geographical aspects, have been essential records of the geography of war. Troop movements, physical geography (topography), human geography (settlements and transport infrastructure) have all been effectively represented using maps. However, the content of war maps is very much presented at a synoptic and aggregate level. It tends to reveal little about the situation on the ground facing the individual soldier, those in command and back in the home country. Having said that, individualistic expression manifests in map annotations that record personal geographies of war (Cartwright 2012). War maps also reveal little about the processes of propaganda / recruitment and satirical responses to war. Artifacts such as cartoons, prose, poems, fine art and music can effectively record these personal aspects of war. By extension, such artifacts have a high likelihood of implicitly or explicitly containing a situated geography too. For example, Kleeman (2006) analysed the geography contained in cartoons. Such geographies tend to be the ones not captured by maps. This is the geography of ‘place’ rather than ‘space’. This is the motivation for exploring cartoons as an example type of artifact, for the geography that they can reveal. They (as a body of work) have the potential to provide a hitherto undetected pattern of geography that