Predictors of International News Flow: Exploring a Networked Global Media System

ABSTRACT

This study examines a networked global media system by discerning what drives international news flow in multiple dimensions. A network analysis of news coverage from news websites in 67 countries and their interactions in 2015 reveals that structural factors not only predict a country’s international attention – but also its transnational intermedia agenda-setting (IAS) power – the power to influence international discourse. Rationales that drive different dimensions of news flow vary. For instance, our results show that economically influential and more populous countries continue to set the world news agenda in reporting international politics, but smaller countries may have the potential to determine how their own countries are portrayed by the outside world. In addition, trade volume explains international news flow in several ways. Overall, this article advances prior literature by demonstrating that international news flow is multilayered, networked, and possesses systemness and fluidity.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The 67 countries are AE, AF, AR, AS, AU, BG, BE, BH, BR, CA, CH, DA, EG, FJ, FI, FR, GA, GM, GH, GR, HA, HU, IC, IN, ID, IR, IZ, EI, IT, JM, JA, KE, KU, MI, MY, MR, MX, NP, NL, NZ, NI, NO, PK, RP, PL, RS, RW, SA, SG, SE, SL, SN, SF, KS, SP, CE, SU, SW, SZ, SY, TH, TU, UK, UY, US, VM, and ZA. The country codes can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FIPS_country_codes.

² An earlier version of GKG’s themes and the keywords used in matching can be found here: https://github.com/ahalterman/GKG-Themes/blob/master/SET_EVENTPATTERNS.xml.

³ For a list of all issues and their corresponding GDELT themes, see: https://github.com/chrisjvargo/gdelt/blob/master/GDELT%20Issues.ipynb.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lei Guo

Lei Guo (Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin) is an assistant professor of emerging media studies at Boston University. Her research focuses mainly on the development of media effects theories, emerging media and democracy, and computational social science methodologies.

Chris J. Vargo

Chris J. Vargo (Ph.D., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. He specializes in the use of computer science methods to investigate social media using theories from the communication and political science disciplines.