Foreign Nation Visibility in U.S. News Coverage

Abstract

Previous scholarship has neglected to fully explore the dynamic nature of international news flow over time. This study uses content analysis to track foreign nation visibility on a yearly basis in two major U.S. news outlets: the New York Times (1950-2006) and NBC Nightly News (1968-2006). Time-series analysis is used to evaluate the influence of five contextual factors on foreign nation visibility in the news: (a) geographic proximity, (b) bilateral trade flow, (c) U.S. troop deployment, (d) GDP per capita, and (e) population. The research findings build on earlier news flow studies by adding a longitudinal dimension that has been absent from previous news “flow” scholarship.

Keywords

foreign nation visibility international news flow time series agenda setting content analysis

Communication scholars have long been interested in identifying the key determinants of what makes foreign countries newsworthy and why some countries are considered more newsworthy than others. Research on international news flow has identified dozens of variables that correlate with foreign nation visibility in the news, but most of this research has been cross-sectional in nature, focusing on the visibility of foreign nations at a particular point in time. Given the difficulty of gathering longitudinal data, relatively little news flow research has systematically examined whether and to what extent foreign nation visibility and the factors that influence it have changed over time.¹ Specifically, scholarship has typically only addressed why some countries get more news coverage than others at a specific point in time, not how and why the focus shifts over time from one country to another.

This study seeks to build on previous international news flow scholarship by adding a longitudinal perspective to the study of foreign nation visibility. Using time-series analysis, we examine foreign nation visibility in two major U.S. news outlets—The New York Times (NYT) and NBC Nightly News (NBC)—over the course of several decades in the post–World War II era (1950-2006). Our analysis focuses on five variables, which we derived from scholarship and which we expect to contribute to foreign nation visibility in the news: (a) a foreign nation’s geographic distance from the United States, (b) its trade flow with the United States, (c) the number of U.S. soldiers present in the country, (d) the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country, and (e) its population size. The first variable relates to the geographic proximity of a foreign nation to the United States; the second and third variables relate to the significance of a foreign nation in its relationship to the United States; and the fourth and fifth variables relate to the prominence of a foreign nation in what Golan (2006) calls the “hierarchy of nations.” Our primary interest in this study is to determine the extent to which these factors—and changes in them over time—have affected foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage in the post–World War II era.

The rest of this article proceeds as follows: First, we provide a theoretical framework for understanding foreign nation visibility on the U.S. news agenda, paying particular attention to the five explanatory variables listed above. We then explain our research design and methodology, emphasizing its longitudinal nature and highlighting the added value of time-series analysis. Finally, we present our results and discuss the major implications of our findings.

Theoretical Framework

Communication scholars interested in which foreign nations receive news coverage and why typically employ the terminology of international news flow, or simply news flow, to refer to what we are describing as foreign nation visibility. Most news flow studies focus on either event-oriented factors or context-oriented factors to account for variations in foreign nation visibility (Chang & Lee, 1992). Event-oriented factors are those that are intrinsic to events, and they pertain directly to what happened, when, and how. Context-oriented factors are extrinsic to events: they provide the backdrop against which individual events occur, and they pertain to where the event took place and who was involved. Of particular interest to us in this study are the context-oriented factors that contribute to some countries getting into the news more often than others—regardless of the events that happen there.

Previous news flow scholarship has identified dozens of variables associated with foreign nation visibility in the news, including a foreign nation’s gross domestic product (e.g., Robinson & Sparkes, 1976), its military expenditure (e.g., Golan & Wanta, 2003), its population size (e.g., Dupree, 1971), its geographic proximity to the United States (e.g., Wu, 1998), and its level of trade with the United States (e.g., Golan, 2006). As mentioned, however, there has been relatively little longitudinal research in this area. This gap in the literature is ironic given that international news flow connotes a dynamic process—and yet most studies have measured the “flow” at one point in time. This gap is also problematic because it can spur incorrect inferences concerning the level and nature of foreign nation visibility, and it makes it difficult to compare the results of news flow studies conducted at different points in time. With this in mind, in this research we employ a longitudinal design to explore how foreign nation visibility and the contextual factors that influence it have changed in the post–World War II era.

Specifically, our study focuses on three contextual factors that we expect to influence foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage: (a) a country’s geographic proximity to the United States, (b) two measures of a country’s significance in its relationship to the United States, and (c) two measures of a country’s prominence in the hierarchy of nations. The first factor—geographic proximity—refers to the physical distance between a foreign nation and the United States. Scholarship has found that geographic proximity affects news coverage in both domestic (Martin, 1988; Morton & Warren, 1992) and international news stories (Chang, Shoemaker, & Brendlinger, 1987; Galtung & Ruge, 1965). Indeed, Stevenson and Cole (1984) have gone so far as to suggest that proximity is a universal news value. This contention makes intuitive sense: journalists are more likely to cover and audiences are more likely to follow events that arise closer to home—both because they are easier for journalists to cover and more interesting for news audiences to follow. Following this logic, our first theoretical expectation is as follows:

Hypothesis 1 (H1): The closer foreign nations are to the United States geographically, the more visible they will be in U.S. news coverage.

There is reason to believe that the explanatory power of geographic proximity has decreased in importance over time. According to Livingston and Bennett (2003), for example, the rise and spread of new media technologies like broadband cable, satellite, and Internet have fundamentally reshaped the information environment so that it is easier today for journalists to travel to and report from faraway places. Livingston and Van Belle’s (2005) study of the effects of satellite technology in news coverage of foreign natural disasters seems to support this hypothesis—specifically, they found that distance was less of an impediment to news attention in the 1980s and 1990s than it was in the 1960s and 1970s. More recently, in an analysis of American, British, and Dutch news coverage of foreign earthquakes, Koopmans and Vliegenthart (2010) found that in spite of the new media technologies available to them, journalists still tend to ignore disasters in remote and faraway places. In light of these diverging findings, we pose the following research question:

Research Question 1 (RQ1): Has geographic proximity as a predictor of foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage increased, remained the same, or decreased in importance over time?

The second contextual factor that we expect to influence foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage relates to the extent to which a foreign nation is perceived to be significant (i.e., important) in its relationship to the United States. There are many dimensions in which foreign nations may be significant to other nations (see Shoemaker & Cohen, 2006), but, in this study, we focus our attention on economic and political significance, as both have been found to be highly predictive of foreign nation visibility in the United States. For example, in an analysis of U.S. news coverage of foreign events, Shoemaker, Danielian, and Brendlinger (1991) found both economic and political significance to be predictive of foreign nation visibility on the U.S. news agenda. In the authors’ words, when “deviant events occur in tandem with important indicators of the political or economic significance of a country to the United States, the U.S. media give such events accentuated coverage” (p. 795). Corroborating this finding, in a more recent analysis of the attitudinal profile of U.S. television journalists, Kim (2002) found that most international news in the United States comes from areas “where American political or economic interests are at stake” (p. 431).

Because several potential indicators of economic and political significance were not available for much of the more-than-50-year period under study, we relied on a single indicator for each type of significance. Specifically, we measured economic significance as the total trade flow (imports plus exports) between a foreign nation and the United States (see Wu, 1998), and we measured political significance as the total number of U.S. troops in each foreign nation.² Previous scholarship suggests that both types of significance are likely to influence foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage. For example, in a survey of 279 U.S. newspaper editors Chang and Lee (1992) found that “U.S. military involvement” increased the likelihood that foreign countries would be covered in the U.S. news media. Likewise, several studies have found a strong positive relationship between bilateral trade flow and bilateral news flow (e.g., Ahern, 1984; Golan, 2008). Taken together, these studies suggest that U.S. news stories about foreign affairs tend to be about “us”—what is happening, or what could happen, to us economically and politically. With this in mind, our theoretical expectations are as follows:

Hypothesis 2 (H2): The more trade flow there is between a foreign nation and the United States, the more visible that foreign nation will be in U.S. news coverage.

Hypothesis 3 (H3): The more U.S. troops are stationed in a foreign nation, the more visible that foreign nation will be in U.S. news coverage.

As discussed above, the evolution of foreign nation visibility over time is largely ignored in earlier news flow studies—therefore, we can only speculate about over time changes. Still, it is clear that the relationship of the United States to the rest of the world has changed significantly in the last half century as U.S. foreign policy has become less isolationist and more internationalist (Hook & Spanier, 2000). This is true from both an economic perspective and a military perspective. Economically, the United States has become much more dependent on trade over time. At the same time, the United States has become much more active militarily, deploying more troops to more foreign nations than any other country in world history (Kane, 2004). As it remains unclear whether these changes have had a measurable impact on U.S. news coverage of the rest of the world, we offer the following research questions:

Research Question 2 (RQ2): Has trade flow as a predictor of foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage increased, remained the same, or decreased in importance over time?

Research Question 3 (RQ3): Has U.S. military presence as a predictor of foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage increased, remained the same, or decreased in importance over time?

The fourth and fifth contextual factors that we expect to affect foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage relate to the power that foreign nations have to effect change in the international system. Unlike geographic proximity or economic and military significance, which are defined in terms of the relationship between the United States and another country, these variables relate to a country’s prominence in what Golan (2006) calls the “hierarchy of nations” (see also Chang, 1998; Kim & Barnett, 1996). Just as there is a tendency for domestic news stories to focus on prominent people—for example, powerful politicians, wealthy business leaders, and popular celebrities (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009)—we expect international news stories to focus on prominent foreign nations. In this study, we focused on two measures of a foreign nation’s prominence. First, we measured prominence in economic terms by using a foreign nation’s GDP per capita as an indicator of that country’s resources and capabilities—several studies have shown that GDP is among the most important predictors of foreign nation visibility in the news (Ahern, 1984; Gunaratne, 2001). As a second measure of a country’s prominence, we also considered the size of a nation’s population since previous scholarship has found this variable to be a good predictor of visibility as well (Kim & Barnett, 1996; Nnaemeka & Richstad, 1981). Phrased in the form of hypotheses, we expect the following:

Hypothesis 4 (H4): The wealthier a foreign nation, the more visible it will be in U.S. news coverage.

Hypothesis 5 (H5): The more populous a foreign nation, the more visible it will be in U.S. news coverage.

Although longitudinal research in this area is lacking, it is important to note that wealth and population have been found to be predictive of news flow in different time periods (Dupree, 1971; Gunaratne, 2001). As such, it is logical to expect that population and wealth would remain stable as predictors of foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage. Given the lack of a solid empirical or theoretical basis for this expectation, however, we again pose research questions:

Research Question 4 (RQ4): Has economic wealth as a predictor of foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage increased, remained the same, or decreased in importance over time?

Research Question 5 (RQ5): Has population size as a predictor of foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage increased, remained the same, or decreased in importance over time?

Method

To address the above hypotheses and research questions, we conducted longitudinal content analyses of two major U.S. news sources: The NYT and NBC. We chose to analyze the NYT because it is generally considered the U.S. “newspaper of record” (Chang et al., 1987) and scholarship has shown that it is an important intermedia agenda-setter (Golan, 2006). In recognition of the elite and potentially unique character of this medium, however, we supplemented our analysis of the NYT with an examination of NBC—the most watched U.S. network television news program (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2009). Including both news sources gives us more confidence that we can generalize our results to the broader U.S. news media. The NYT content was gathered from the Historical New York Times Index, and the NBC content was gathered from the Vanderbilt Television News Index.

The content analysis itself consisted of a single coding item—a yearly count of the total number of news stories in each index in which a foreign country was a significant focus. The unit of analysis was the news story. The specific keywords that we searched for were the names—and variations on those names—of each foreign country that existed in the international system during the 57-year period analyzed (1950-2006). As we were only interested in salient country mentions, we limited our keyword searches to the citation or abstract of the news stories in our sample. This technique has limitations, of course—for example, it likely does not capture the true breadth and depth of foreign countries mentioned in all news stories—but it is important to note that there is a long tradition of scholars relying on news abstracts in general, and these two indexes of news abstracts in particular, as proxy measures of news content (e.g., Baumgartner & Jones, 1993; Norris, 1995). More importantly, although news abstracts are by no means perfect representations of the news stories they are meant to symbolize, they have been shown to be reliable representations of news content (Althaus, Edy, & Phalen, 2001; Edy, Althaus, & Phalen, 2005).

To examine the dynamics of change over time, we examined nearly six decades of NYT coverage, beginning in 1950 with the start of the Korean War and ending in 2006, the last year for which data were available. We also examined more than three decades of NBC news coverage, beginning in 1968—the 1st year that data were available—and ending in 2006. To facilitate analysis of these data, we subdivided the broader post–World War II era into four more manageable time periods—each of which represents a distinct geopolitical era. Specifically, we treated 1950 to 1973 as the early Cold War era, 1974 to 1991 as the late Cold War era, 1992 to 2001 as the post–Cold War era, and 2002 to 2006 as the post-9/11 era. These time periods were chosen because scholarship suggests that U.S. foreign affairs discourse changed considerably after major combat operations ended in Vietnam in 1973 (Mermin, 1999; Norris, 1995), again after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 (Entman, 2004; Norris, 1995), and again after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (Burney, 2002; Hutcheson, Domke, Billeaudeaux, & Garland, 2004).

In addition, we collected data on the geographic distance in kilometers between Washington, D.C. and the capital city of every country in our sample (H1). These data come from the Centre D’Etudes Prospectives et D’Informations Internationales (CEPII) database, France’s leading institute for research on international relationships. We also collected data on the total volume of annual trade in dollars (exports plus imports) between the United States and every country in our sample (H2). These data come from the Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS) database, which is maintained by the International Monetary Fund. Likewise, we gathered data on the total number of U.S. troops officially deployed to each country in the world (H3). These data come from the Global U.S. Troop Deployment database maintained by the Center for Data Analysis, a research arm of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in the United States. Finally, we gathered data on the total population of each country (H4) and the per capita GDP of every country in our sample (H5), and these data come from the Expanded Trade and GDP database.

Regarding the analyses themselves, because of the strong nonnormal distribution of some of our data, we log-transformed our dependent variable (number of country mentions) and all of our independent variables. We also added a trend variable to account for changes over time.³ The pooled time-series structure of our data file had enough cross-sectional (by country) and overtime (by year) observations to allow us to assess the impact of those variables that varied primarily across space (distance and population size) as well as those variables that varied both across space and over time (GDP, troops, and trade). Particular attention was paid to autocorrelation (dependency of observations across time) and correlation across panels. To identify the most appropriate technique for data analysis, we conducted several diagnostic tests.⁴

First, we checked whether the dependent variable was stationary—that is, whether the mean of each country-level series was unaffected by a change of time origin. Specifically, we used the Fisher test to assess the stationarity of the data in our pooled design. The results of this test allowed us to reject the null hypothesis of nonstationarity (χ²[384] = 2354.03; p < .001 for NYT, χ²[384] = 2918.90; p < .001 for NBC), which meant that we did not have to differentiate the series.

Second, we used the Wooldridge test to test for autocorrelation in our panel data. Not surprisingly, it showed that our observations were correlated across time: F(1, 191) = 101.77; p < .001 for NYT, F(1, 191) = 100.75, p < .001 for NBC.

Third, we conducted a fixed-effects analysis including a lagged dependent variable and all dependent variables that differ not only across countries but also over time. A fixed-effects analysis resembles an ordinary regression with dummies for all countries as independent variables. The error structure resulting from the fixed-effects analysis indicated panel level heteroscedastisticity—that is, the level of explained variance differs across countries (Wald χ²[133] = 11777.2, p < .001 for NYT; Wald χ²[133] = 3.1e + .05, p < .001 for NBC).

Finally, the results from the fixed-effects analysis and a random-effects analysis—where country dummies are replaced by a random intercept—demonstrated contemporaneous correlation of the residuals across panels (Peseran LM-test = 23.01, p < .001 for fixed-effects model NYT, Peseran LM-test = 30.72, p < .001 for random-effects model NYT, Peseran LM-test = 17.38, p < .001 for fixed-effects model NBC, Peseran LM-test = 15.75, p < .001 for random-effects model NBC).

The combination of autocorrelation, panel-level heteroscedasticity, and contemporaneous correlation made an ordinary least squares regression model with panel-corrected standard errors a viable option (Beck & Katz, 1995). We tested different ways to capture the autoregressive process present in our data. Overall, it turned out that a specification with a panel specific AR(1) error structure was best suited to deal with autocorrelation—this specification results in models with considerable levels of explained variance, which means that the size of the current error term is influenced by the size of the previous error term but that the size of this influence is allowed to differ across countries. Substantively, this means that we presumed that news about some countries is more stable—that is, a higher influence of the previous error value—than news about other countries. Mathematically, such a model can be written as follows:

y_{i, t} = c + \sum^{​} b x_{i, t - 1} + ε_{i, t} ε_{i t} = ρ_{i} ε_{i, t - 1} + v_{i, t}

Specifically, y_i,t is the value of country i at time t on the dependent variable, c the constant, x_i,t the value of country i at time t on an independent variable, ϵ _i,t the error term, and ϵ _i , _t _–₁ the value of the error term a year earlier. ρ _i is the country-specific autoregressive parameter that corrects for autocorrelation in the residuals, ν _i , _t is the part of the error term that cannot be explained by the previous value of this error term. Finally, all of the independent variables were lagged by 1 year. This was done to meet one of the basic requirements of causality—that is, the cause has to precede the consequence.⁵

Results

In this section, we begin with a descriptive overview of the results of our longitudinal analysis of foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage. We then explore how well the contextual factors analyzed in this study predicted visibility both in the aggregate and over time. The first step in our analysis was to examine which countries were most visible during each of the four geopolitical eras analyzed. Table 1 lists the top ten most mentioned foreign nations in the NYT and on NBC during the early Cold War era (1950-1973), the late Cold War era (1974-1991), the post–Cold War era (1992-2001), and the post-9/11 era (2002-2006). Although NBC’s foreign news agenda is clearly more concentrated than the NYT’s, there is considerable overlap in the specific countries that both outlets focused on during each era. Notably, nine countries were among the top ten most mentioned countries in at least four of the eight series analyzed. Specifically, Russia (USSR) and Israel received the most consistent news coverage—followed closely by Britain, China, France, Japan, Germany, Iraq, and Mexico. It is worth pointing out that Britain, China, France, and Russia (USSR) are nuclear powers and members of the UN Security Council—the UN’s most powerful body. Israel is a nuclear power and one of America’s closest allies, whereas Japan has one of the largest economies in the world, and is one of America’s biggest trading partners. Germany is a member of the G-8 and has one of the biggest economies in the world, whereas Iraq has been on the opposing end of two wars with the United States, and Mexico, in addition to sharing a border with the United States, is one of America’s biggest trading partners.

Table 1.

Top Ten Most Mentioned Countries in U.S. News Coverage by Yearly Percentage of Total Story Mentions, 1950-2006.

Rank	Era 1		Era 2		Era 3		Era 4
	Early Cold War (1950-1973)^a		Late Cold War (1974-1991)		Post–Cold War (1992-2001)		Post-9/11 (2002-2006)
	NYT	NBC	NYT	NBC	NYT	NBC	NYT	NBC
1	Russia (6.0%)	Vietnam (25.2%)	Russia (5.4%)	Russia (14.0%)	France (5.6%)	Russia (8.0%)	Iraq (14.7%)	Iraq (30.9%)
2	Vietnam (6.0%)	Russia (9.5%)	Israel (4.9%)	Israel (6.2%)	Japan (5.6%)	Bosnia (7.3%)	China (5.4%)	Afghanistan (5.1%)
3	Britain (5.8%)	Israel (5.7%)	France (4.5%)	Iran (5.7%)	Russia (5.2%)	Mexico (4.6%)	France (4.3%)	Israel (4.3%)
4	France (5.1%)	Cambodia (4.6%)	Japan (4.2%)	Lebanon (4.6%)	China (4.6%)	Israel (4.6%)	Israel (3.6%)	Jordan (4.0%)
5	China (4.3%)	China (4.3%)	China (3.7%)	Vietnam (2.9%)	Germany (3.8%)	Iraq (4.3%)	Japan (3.5%)	Britain (3.3%)
6	Israel (3.9%)	France (3.9%)	Britain (3.5%)	West Germany (2.8%)	Mexico (3.7%)	Yugoslavia (4.2%)	Russia (3.5%)	Iran (3.2%)
7	Canada (3.7%)	Britain (3.5%)	Iran (3.3%)	East Germany (2.7%)	Israel (3.7%)	China (3.5%)	Britain (3.1%)	Pakistan (2.9%)
8	Japan (3.3%)	Egypt (2.6%)	Lebanon (2.8%)	China (2.6%)	Britain (3.0%)	Japan (3.3%)	Afghanistan (2.8%)	Russia (2.5%)
9	India (2.9%)	East Germany (2.4%)	Canada (2.7%)	France (2.4%)	Bosnia (2.8%)	Britain (3.2%)	Mexico (2.8%)	North Korea (2.5%)
10	Italy (2.6%)	West Germany (2.4%)	Mexico (2.5%)	Iraq (2.4%)	Italy (2.5%)	Cuba (2.4%)	Germany (2.7%)	South Korea (2.5%)
Top 10	177,636 (44.2%)	9,362 (64.2%)	89,927 (37.6%)	21,304 (46.3%)	45,045 (40.5%)	5,401 (48.8%)	21,421 (46.5%)	5,173 (61.2%)
Total N	401,934	14,603	239,451	46,032	111,296	11,060	46,041	8,462

Note: NYT = The New York Times; NBC = NBC Nightly News.

The early Cold War data for NBC only cover the period 1968-1973.

The fact that the nine countries discussed above were so prominent in U.S. news coverage in the post–World War II era suggests that at least at the top end of the distribution, four of the factors that we considered to be of importance in determining foreign nation visibility are indeed important. Specifically, during the time periods analyzed, foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage seems to have been influenced by geographic proximity to the United States (H1), economic significance to the United States (H2), military significance to the United States (H3), and prominence in the hierarchy of nations (H4). Notwithstanding the overlap in foreign nation visibility in the two news outlets analyzed, our data demonstrate that the foreign news agenda of NBC was both more concentrated and more variable than that of the NYT—a finding that suggests that the systemic factors influencing foreign nation visibility on the U.S. news agenda likely have different impacts depending on the news format.

The next step in our analysis was to examine which countries dominated news coverage on a yearly basis. Table 2 lists the top ten most mentioned country-years in U.S. news coverage during each of the four time periods analyzed. The data presented in this table demonstrate that in the post–World War II era, the biggest U.S. news agenda hogs have been countries with which the United States has been in conflict. For example, Vietnam was the most mentioned foreign country in the NYT for 9 consecutive years (1965-1973) during the early Cold War era, whereas Iraq was the most mentioned foreign country during all 5 years of the post-9/11 era. Interestingly, Iraq consumed far more of the NYT’s foreign news agenda in 2003 and 2004 than Vietnam ever did—even though there were more American troops and more American casualties in Vietnam than there were in Iraq. Amazingly, one in every four countries mentioned (24%) in the citation or abstract of the NYT in 2003, and one in every six countries mentioned (17%) in 2004 was Iraq. By way of comparison, Vietnam only consumed an average of 13% of the NYT’s foreign news agenda during the 9 years that it dominated news coverage. Although NBC data only go back to 1968, a similar pattern is evident in its coverage of Vietnam and Iraq. Vietnam dominated NBC’s foreign news coverage throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, but Iraq accounted for a larger percentage of NBC’s foreign news stories in 2003 (37%) and 2004 (37%) than Vietnam ever did. Taken together, these data are suggestive that the U.S. news media’s window on the world has ebbed and flowed with major U.S. military involvement abroad. Furthermore, foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage—at least during times of war—seems to have become more concentrated over time.

Table 2.

Top Ten Most Mentioned Country-Years in U.S. News Coverage by Yearly Percentage of Total Story Mentions, 1950-2006.

Rank	Era 1		Era 2		Era 3		Era 4
	Early Cold War (1950-1973)^a		Late Cold War (1974-1991)		Post–Cold War (1992-2001)		Post-9/11 (2002-2006)
	NYT	NBC	NYT	NBC	NYT	NBC	NYT	NBC
1	Vietnam 1968 (16.9%)	Vietnam 1968 (32.7%)	Iraq 1991 (9.0%)	Iran 1987 (19.1%)	Japan 1995 (7.9%)	Yugoslavia 1999 (25.5%)	Iraq 2003 (23.9%)	Iraq 2003 (36.9%)
2	Vietnam 1967 (16.0%)	Vietnam 1972 (30.0%)	Iran 1980 (8.7%)	USSR 1984 (18.1%)	France 1998 (7.3%)	Afghanistan 2001 (21.7%)	Iraq 2004 (17.3%)	Iraq 2004 (36.9%)
3	Vietnam 1966 (15.9%)	Vietnam 1969 (27.9%)	Iran 1979 (8.3%)	Iran 1980 (17.4%)	Afghanistan 2001 (7.3%)	Bosnia 1995 (17.4%)	Iraq 2005 (12.5%)	Iraq 2006 (29.6%)
4	Vietnam 1969 (14.5%)	Vietnam 1970 (22.9%)	Iran 1987 (8.2%)	USSR 1988 (16.8%)	Russia 1992 (6.8%)	Iraq 1998 (14.6%)	Iraq 2006 (11.2%)	Iraq 2005 (29.2%)
5	Vietnam 1972 (14.3%)	Vietnam 1973 (22.4%)	Israel 1978 (7.3%)	USSR 1987 (16.7%)	Japan 1993 (6.7%)	Bosnia 1993 (13.2%)	China 2005 (7.9%)	Iraq 2002 (16.6%)
6	Vietnam 1965 (13.8%)	Vietnam 1971 (20.4%)	Israel 1977 (7.2%)	USSR 1989 (16.3%)	Bosnia 1993 (6.5%)	Russia 1993 (10.2%)	China 2006 (6.2%)	Afghanistan 2002 (11.4%)
7	Vietnam 1971 (11.7%)	USSR 1969 (12.2%)	USSR 1991 (7.1%)	USSR 1990 (16.3%)	Japan 1996 (6.4%)	Russia 1996 (9.6%)	Iraq 2002 (5.1%)	Israel 2002 (7.6%)
8	Vietnam 1970 (10.5%)	USSR 1968 (11.2%)	Iraq 1990 (7.0%)	USSR 1991 (15.7%)	France 1999 (6.4%)	Russia 1995 (9.6%)	China 2004 (5.1%)	Israel 2006 (6.5%)
9	Vietnam 1973 (9.4%)	USSR 1972 (10.7%)	Israel 1974 (6.9%)	USSR 1985 (15.6%)	Japan 1998 (6.2%)	Cuba 2000 (9.3%)	Japan 2002 (5.0%)	Pakistan 2002 (6.2%)
10	USSR 1955 (9.4%)	Cambodia 1970 (10.5%)	Vietnam 1975 (6.7%)	Vietnam 1975 (15.3%)	France 2000 (6.2%)	Russia 1992 (8.8%)	Iran 2006 (4.9%)	Iran 2006 (6.0%)

Note: NYT = The New York Times; NBC = NBC Nightly News.

The early Cold War data for NBC only cover the period 1968-1973.

The key analyses in our study are depicted in Tables 3 and 4, which address the overall relevance of the five contextual factors that were the focus of our study for the entire period under examination: NYT (1950-2006) and NBC (1968-2006). Model 1—in both tables—controls for autocorrelation as well as changes over time (via the trend variable). For the NYT, the total explained variance of this first model—considering all five contextual factors together—is high (R² = .598). Moreover, when we consider each variable on its own, we find support for all five of our hypotheses. Specifically, distance (H1), trade (H2), troops (H3), GDP per capita (H4) and population (H5) are all significantly correlated with foreign nation visibility in the expected direction. For NBC, the total explained variance of this first model is lower (R² = .236) than it is for the NYT, but we do find support for four of our five hypotheses. Specifically, distance (H1), troops (H3), GDP per capita (H4), and population (H5) are all correlated with visibility in the expected direction. The primary difference between the two news mediums in our analysis is that trade is a significant predictor of visibility for the NYT but not for NBC. This finding builds on our descriptive results and it suggests that foreign nation visibility in the NYT is more stable, focusing on countries which are economically significant to the United States, than foreign nation visibility on NBC, which tends to be more focused on countries with which the United States is in conflict.

Table 3.

Predicting Foreign Nation Visibility in the New York Times, 1950-2006.

	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5
	NYT (1950-2006)	NYT (1950-1973)	NYT (1974-1991)	NYT (1992-2001)	NYT (2001-2006)
Distance (log)	−0.181**** (0.0447)	0.0622 (0.0698)	−0.174****,^a (0.0451)	−0.350****,^a (0.0548)	−0.227* (0.122)
Trade (log)	0.0519**** (0.0120)	0.0542*** (0.0173)	0.0488*** (0.0175)	−0.00805^a (0.0200)	0.0569*,^a (0.0296)
Troops (log)	0.0615**** (0.00888)	0.0665**** (0.00871)	0.0548**** (0.0119)	0.0719**** (0.0172)	0.140****,^a (0.0288)
GDP per capita (log)	0.366**** (0.0334)	0.402**** (0.0387)	0.493**** (0.0412)	0.451**** (0.0664)	0.234***,^a (0.0727)
Population (log)	0.514**** (0.0156)	0.519**** (0.0154)	0.535**** (0.0215)	0.610****,^a (0.0271)	0.505****,^a (0.0470)
Trend	−0.0572**** (0.00262)	−0.0615**** (0.00652)	−0.0677**** (0.00763)	−0.00000995^a (0.0123)	−0.0931****,^a (0.0203)
Constant	−0.601 (0.426)	−2.952**** (0.738)	−1.393*** (0.534)	−3.232**** (0.801)	3.002** (1.509)
Number of observations	7,166	2,385	2,538	1,586	657
Number of countries	169	132	146	164	166
R ²	.598	.844	.764	.751	.893

Note: NYT = The New York Times. Standard errors in parentheses.

Significantly different from previous period at p < .05.

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01. ****p < .001.

Table 4.

Predicting Foreign Nation Visibility on NBC Nightly News, 1968-2006.

	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5
	NBC (1950-2006)	NBC (1950-1973)	NBC (1974-1991)	NBC (1992-2001)	NBC (2001-2006)
Distance (log)	−0.130** (0.0604)	0.0622 (0.0733)	−0.235****,^a (0.0706)	−0.224**** (0.0555)	0.0971^a (0.194)
Trade (log)	−0.0172 (0.0154)	−0.103**** (0.0190)	−0.0172^a (0.0258)	−0.0832****,^a (0.0206)	0.0201^a (0.0304)
Troops (log)	0.0900**** (0.0126)	0.0978**** (0.00897)	0.0801**** (0.0127)	0.0705**** (0.0205)	0.152****,^a (0.0370)
GDP per capita (log)	0.259**** (0.0407)	0.452**** (0.0580)	0.375**** (0.0483)	0.245****,^a (0.0401)	0.119 (0.0868)
Population (log)	0.336**** (0.0254)	0.449**** (0.0360)	0.388**** (0.0319)	0.358**** (0.0318)	0.275**** (0.0561)
Trend	−0.0306**** (0.00481)	0.100* (0.0600)	−0.0426****,^a (0.00842)	−0.0293** (0.0136)	−0.0107 (0.0227)
Constant	−1.533*** (0.588)	−8.762**** (1.651)	−1.239* (0.663)	−0.462 (0.895)	−3.302 (2.338)
Number of observations	5,545	764	2,538	1,586	657
Number of countries	169	132	146	164	166
R ²	.236	.568	.397	.345	.599

Note: NYT = The New York Times; NBC = NBC Nightly News. Standard errors in parentheses.

Significantly different from previous period at p < .05.

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01. ****p < .001.

Finally, although it was not a primary focus of this study, it is worth highlighting that the trend variable for both the NYT and NBC is negative, which means that that the total number of foreign nations mentioned each year in each news outlet has decreased over time, even as the number of countries in the international system has increased. This is an unexpected finding, and it will be discussed more elaborately in the next section.

Models 2 through 5 in Table 3 and Table 4 tell us more about how the factors that influence foreign nation visibility in the NYT and on NBC have changed over time. Whereas Model 1 took into account the entire period under examination, Models 2 through 5 represent distinct geopolitical eras within the broader post–World War II era. Specifically, Model 2 focuses on the early Cold War era (1950-1973), Model 3 focuses on the late Cold War era (1974-1991), Model 4 focuses on the post–Cold War era (1992-2001), and Model 5 focuses on the post-9/11 era (2002-2006). Recall that we raised five research questions regarding changes over time in the influence of the five contextual factors that are the focus of this study. Specifically, we wondered whether distance (RQ1), trade (RQ2), troops (RQ3), GDP per capita (RQ4), and population (RQ5) would become more or less important over time as predictors of foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage.

Presented in order of our research questions, we find that distance was not a significant predictor of foreign nation visibility in either the NYT or NBC in the early Cold War years; it was highly significant in the late and post–Cold War years, and then it again became less significant in the post-9/11 years. This finding suggests that distance may have lost some, though not all, of its importance over time as a predictor of foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage. Turning to trade, for the NYT this variable was a significant predictor of visibility in the early and late Cold War years, but it was not significant in the post–Cold War years and it was only slightly significant in the most recent time period. For NBC, the trade variable never contributed positively to predicting visibility—in fact, it exerted a slightly negative influence in the early and post–Cold War years. These results suggest that trade is not a consistent predictor of foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage. By contrast, U.S. troop deployment was clearly significant for both news outlets in all four periods analyzed—moreover, the size of the coefficient was biggest in the post-9/11 era, suggesting that this variable may be becoming more important over time. Finally, GDP per capita is significant for both news outlets in three of the four eras analyzed, while population is significant in all four. Taken together, these data suggest that a foreign nation’s prominence in the hierarchy of nations is a relatively stable predictor of foreign nation visibility in U.S. news coverage, although GDP seems to have become less important post-9/11—possibly due to the dominance of Iraq and to a lesser extent Afghanistan on the U.S. news agenda during this time period.

Discussion

This study sought to shed light on three aspects of foreign nation visibility on the U.S. news agenda: (a) Which foreign nations are most visible? (b) Why some foreign nations are more visible than others? and (c) How foreign nation visibility and the factors that influence it have changed over time? To address these questions, we conducted a content analysis of two major U.S. news outlets: The NYT (1950-2006) and NBC (1968-2006). We used time-series analysis to test the predictive power of several contextual factors that scholarship has suggested influence foreign nation visibility in the news. Differences between the two news outlets exist—for example, NBC’s foreign news agenda was both more concentrated and more variable than that of the NYT—but foreign nation visibility in both news outlets seems to have been largely driven by the same explanatory variables.

Our results indicate that four of the five contextual variables analyzed in this study—distance, U.S. troop deployment, GDP per capita, and population—were predictive of visibility in both news outlets, and the fifth (trade) was predictive of visibility in the NYT but not on NBC. Superficially, it would seem that dramatic events such as the January 2010 Haitian earthquake are what drive foreign nation visibility on the U.S. news agenda—indeed, sometimes they do (e.g., Chang et al., 1987)—but our study shows that contextual factors account for a significant portion of the variance in U.S. news coverage of the rest of the world. These findings not only corroborate earlier news flow studies but also extend them by adding a longitudinal dimension that has been absent from previous news “flow” scholarship.

In particular, five longitudinal findings warrant emphasis. First, population and GDP per capita were among the most predictive contextual factors analyzed in this study—population was significant for both news outlets in all four periods analyzed and GDP per capita was significant in three of the four periods analyzed. This finding corroborates previous research suggesting that a foreign nation’s prominence in the hierarchy of nations remains the most powerful predictor of foreign nation visibility on the U.S. news agenda (Kim & Barnett, 1996).

Second, and contrary to what one might expect, we found that geographic proximity to the United States was not a significant predictor of visibility in the early Cold War years, but it became a significant predictor in the late and post–Cold War years and then dropped in significance again in the post-9/11 period. Notably, this finding challenges the generalizability of Livingston and Van Belle’s (2005) claim that “remoteness is not what it used to be in a world shrunk by advanced media technology” (p. 58) and is in line with more recent research findings that point to the persistent influence of distance on foreign news coverage (e.g., Koopmans & Vliegenthart, 2010). Further longitudinal research is necessary—ideally on news coverage of different types of foreign events—to gain insight into the conditions under which distance does and does not act as an impediment to newsgathering from other countries.

A third longitudinal finding that warrants emphasis has to do with the relationship between trade flow and news flow. Our results show that in the post–World War II era trade flow has become less predictive of visibility in the NYT. The trade variable was slightly significant in the most recent time period, but over time it seems to have lost its status as a stable determiner of foreign nation visibility in the NYT. Furthermore, the NBC data indicate that trade flow was never a significant (positive) predictor of visibility. In light of the widespread belief that trade flow influences news flow (e.g., Ahren, 1984; Golan, 2008), we believe this is an important finding. Recent comparative studies by Wu (2000) and Pietiläinen (2006) have found that, in most countries, trade flow is a significant predictor of foreign nation visibility in the news.⁶ Indeed, Wu (2003) has gone so far as to suggest that “economic interest … plays the central role in determining news from abroad” (p. 20). However, both studies also point to the fact that the United States is different in this regard: trade flow is not nearly as predictive of news flow as other variables. According to Pietiläinen (2006), this may be related to the fact that the U.S. news media are much more likely to focus on countries with which the United States is in conflict—and countries in conflict rarely have significant trade relationships with each other.

Our fourth longitudinal finding indicates that U.S. troop deployment has always been a good predictor of the visibility of foreign countries on the U.S. news agenda but that, with the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it seems to have become an even more important factor in the post-9/11 era. This finding suggests that the old adage, “war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography,” may be more evident today than it was in the past. Perhaps the U.S. news media are trying to “localize the global”—to borrow a phrase from Clausen (2004)—by focusing on “our boys” abroad. Recall that our data demonstrate that in 2003 one in every four foreign affairs news stories in the NYT—and one in every three foreign affairs news stories on NBC—was Iraq. This heavy concentration of U.S. news coverage on Iraq supports Wu’s (2000) contention that international news transmission “reflect[s] the earlier imperial system in which news” followed “national flags . . . [and] . . . armies” (p. 27).

The final longitudinal finding that warrants attention relates to the size of the U.S. news media’s international agenda. Specifically, our analysis indicates that the total number of foreign nations mentioned in both the NYT and NBC has gone down over time, even as the number of countries in the international system has increased. This finding corroborates the work of Riffe, Aust, Jones, Shoemaker, and Sundar (1994) as well as Norris (1995), and it suggests that the U.S. news media’s window on the world has shrunk even as the United States has become more connected politically and economically to the rest of the world. This is a disturbing development that has potentially contributed to the troubling lack of citizen knowledge about foreign affairs in the United States, especially relative to other developed democracies (Curran, Iyengar, Lund, & Salovaara-Moring, 2009; Iyengar, Hahn, Bonfadelli, & Marr, 2009). After all, the news media are the institution primarily responsible for transforming the “world outside”—literally the world outside our borders—into “the pictures in our heads” (Lippman, 1922).

In conclusion, we believe this study makes an important contribution to the literature on international news flow by adding a longitudinal perspective that has often been neglected in the literature. Nonetheless, it is important to point out that our study has important limitations. First, we only examined foreign nation visibility in one nation—the United States. As such, it remains unclear whether our findings are generalizable to other countries. Second, our analysis only considered five independent variables. We would have liked to include more contextual variables in our analysis (e.g., the presence or absence of foreign bureaus and/or foreign correspondents in other countries), but the ambitious longitudinal design of our study made it difficult to do so. Several contextual factors that we had hoped to include in our models were not available for much of the 57-year period analyzed. Others would have required a larger investment in time and resources than we could afford. Notwithstanding these limitations, we think this study has shown that a longitudinal approach to the study of international news flow results in additional and valuable insights.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank David Domke and the members of the Domke Research Group for their comments on this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Timothy M. Jones is an instructor in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at Bellevue College, Bellevue, Washington.

Peter Van Aelst is an assistant professor of political psychology and political communication at the University of Leiden, Leiden, the Netherlands.

Rens Vliegenthart is an assistant professor of political communication in the Department of Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

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