America's Global Standing According to Popular News Sites From Around the World

Asso for Info Science & Tech

2014

Self Cite

Are our memories of the world well described by the international news coverage in our country? If so, sources central to international news may also be central to international recall patterns; in particular, they may reflect an American‐centric focus, given the previously proposed central U.S. position in the news marketplace. We asked people of four different nationalities (China, Israel, Switzerland, and the United States) to list all the countries they could name. We also constructed a network representation of the world for each nation based on the co‐occurrence pattern of countries in the news. To compare news and memories, we developed a computational model that predicts the recall order of countries based on the news networks. Consistent with previous reports, the U.S. news was central to the news networks overall. However, although national recall patterns reflected their corresponding national news sources, the Chinese news was substantially better than other national news sources at predicting both individual and aggregate memories across nations. Our results suggest that news and memories are related but may also reflect biases in the way information is transferred to long‐term memory, potentially biased against the transient coverage of more “free” presses. We discuss possible explanations for this “Chinese news effect” in relation to prominent cognitive and communications theories.

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The news is American but our memories are … Chinese?

Hills

Asso for Info Science & Tech

2014

Self Cite

“…Following the conclusive findings of previous studies (Ishii, 1996;Kim and Barnett, 1996;Robinson and Sparkes, 1976;Segev and Blondheim, 2013a;Segev and Hills, 2013;Wu, 2000Wu, , 2007, the first hypothesis is that Hypothesis 1 (H1): The economic power of a country will be the most significant factor in its news prominence in most countries.…”

Section: Segev 205mentioning

confidence: 93%

The group-sphere model of international news flow: A cross-national comparison of news sites

International Communication Gazette

2015

Self Cite

Why are some countries mentioned very frequently in international news while others are not? Seeking to improve previous explanations in the literature, this study employs a large corpus of news sites in 11 countries and 10 languages over a 3-year period. A systematic computer-driven analysis revealed a similar pattern common to international news in all countries. The best explanation for the prominence of a foreign country in the news included variables from three groups (national traits, relatedness, and events), each representing different spheres (economic, social, and political), respectively. The conceptual contribution and empirical implications for future studies are discussed.

Is the world getting flatter? A new method for examining structural trends in the news

Sheafer

Shenhav

2013

J Am Soc Inf Sci Tec

In this article, we propose a new method to analyze structural changes in networks over time and examine how the representation of the world in two leading newspapers, the New York Times and Der Spiegel, has changed during the past 50 years. We construct international networks based on the co‐occurrences of country names in news items and trace changes in their distribution of centrality over time. Supporting previous studies, our findings indicate a consistent gap between the most central and the least central countries over the years, with the United States remaining at the center of the network and African countries at its peripheries. Surprisingly, the most dynamic changes in the past 50 years occurred in what we call the “middle range”. In both outlets, we identified a trend of convergence, in other words, a more equal centrality of European, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries in the news. The implications of these findings are discussed.