Geographic Content Analysis of the Cartoons of Gallipoli 1915

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.