You’ve learned many different ways that you can represent data and modify your maps. Geographer Mark Monmonier argues that all of these little modifications—smoothing of geographic features, choices about classification scheme, aggregation of data, or clever use of hue—represent little “lies.” He writes, “To portray meaningful relationships for a complex, three-dimensional world on a flat sheet of paper or a video screen, a map must distort reality…There’s no escape from the cartographic paradox: to present a useful and truthful picture, an accurate map must tell white lies.” (1996)

White lies include all sorts of cartographic strategies, including symbolization, generalization, and unintentionally misleading mistakes. Then there are the other kinds of lies—propaganda maps, advertising maps, maps for military defense and disinformation, and maps that push a particular political perspective. As a critical map reader and map maker, it is imperative that you be able to identify and understand all of the ways that maps lie. In this chapter, we are going to focus on how and why maps lie, whether innocently or not so innocently.

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to critically read the maps that you encounter in your daily life—whether simple informational maps or maps with a more complex social or political message—and understand the strategies that the mapmakers have chosen to promote a particular message or highlight specific data features. In order to be a critical map reader, pay attention to the guiding questions in the box on the right.

The various mapping strategies that you’ve learned about in this course all work together to produce a specific result in the final map. The mapping choices that are made can have a big impact on the final product. As we will see a little later in this chapter, these choices—and the lies that they tell—can also have real-world consequences for people and societies.

This chapter will introduce you to guiding questions in thinking about lying maps:

• Who made this map and why?
• What is included and what is excluded from the map?
• What is the source of the data on this map?
• Which modification strategies are at work in this map? What is the effect?