| Creator: | Jean-Christophe Victor |
| Runtime: | 10 minutes |
| First Aired: | present |
Mapping the World is a French programme that explains geopolitical contexts using maps as visual support. It was created in 1990 by political scientist Jean-Christophe Victor, who hosted it up until his death in 2016.[1] The programme returned in September 2017 with Émilie Aubry as host and airs weekly on the Franco-German channel Arte.[2]
The show was first aired from 1990 to 1992, on La Sept until it stopped broadcasting, and has been on air since 1992 on the Franco-German channel Arte. The show is broadcast every Saturday at 20h00 (Paris local time, UTC+1) and rebroadcast several times a week. The format of the show has changed little since the first episode. However, the episode length expanded from 7 to 11 minutes. The transition from 11 to 26 minutes referred to by Jean-Christophe Victor in 2002 was abandoned.
In general, the show runs as follows:
Topographic maps are based on the Ordnance Survey Oxford Cartographers. The most commonly used map projection is that of Eckert (the Pseudo-cylindrical projection). The show also uses satellite imagery from Google Earth and the first use was in the episode named: "Nigeria, rich state poor country."
The Laboratoire d'études politiques et d'analyses cartographiques (LEPAC) produces about forty episodes a year for the channel Arte. The subjects for most episodes are decided a year in advance to allow time for production. This delay in the selection of themes allows a certain hindsight regarding the chosen topic. However, on occasion, the topic of an episode is more closely related to current events. For example, the episode "Tsunami, a natural phenomenon" aired just three months after the events in South-East Asia.
Of the 300 programs (from March 2001 to May 2008), 210 (70%) have a geographical approach and 84 (28%) have a thematic approach. 6 issues remain unclassifiable: introspective (ex: "La Methode le Dessous des Cartes") or dreamers (ex: "A journey with Corto Maltese, Turkey to Samarkand").For information and the geographical most commonly accepted:
Anecdote: The issue of 29 March 2000, for the week of April 1, is a parody of the show itself. The producing team of the show made what could be the episode of 1 April 3000 by offering a retrospective view of the past thousand years.
In a special 10th birthday episode named "La méthode du Dessous des Cartes", the aims of the show were outlined:
The main, oft repeated aim of the show is "to understand rather than to inform."
Each semester, Arte Video and LEPAC publish a DVD. The DVD includes 12 to 20 episodes of the show regarding a theme. DVDs released so far: