The role of landscape and strategic communication in managing legitimacy between a state and its citizens

The physical landscape has historically played a vital role in defining a polity to people, but modern states have not adjusted it to the needs of the information age. We argue in this conceptual paper that: (1) Modern states should include landscape when communicating their identity. (2) Landscapes possess an emotional equity that could be magnified by social media and other information age media. (3) History demonstrates that premodern and later states understood the communication power of landscape. (4) A shift from natural landscape to culturally perceived boundaries undermined the legitimacy of many states partly by weakening their identity. (5) A return to historical, often premodern perception of landscape as a communication asset would help states harness landscape's communication power.