"The United States of Television" (November 2, 2010)
Andrew Shears
When Andrew Shears (who holds a Ph.D. in geography) posted this map of states identified by television shows set there, he did not anticipate its viral reception; the map landed on The Huffington Post within hours. Shears was spurred to revise this map after readers lobbied for changes (for example, Bonanza replaced Reno 911! in Nevada). The interactivity of this map argues strongly for the degree to which popular culture has determined a place’s “identity.” We might ask what it means when a state is identified by a show which fictionalized its own past, as Deadwood did for South Dakota.