Convergence of media attention across 129 countries

• Main Authors: AN, Jisun, ALDARBESTI, Hassan, KWAK, Haewoon
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: Domestication; Globalization; Media attention; Media convergence; Tensor factorization; Unfiltered News; Numerical Analysis and Computation
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/6067; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/7070/viewcontent/456737_Print.indd.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The objective of this study is to assess the longitudinal trends of media similarity and dissimilarity on the international scale. As news value has well-established political, cultural, and economic consequences, the degree to which media coverage and content is converging across countries has implications for international relations. To study this convergence, we use the daily data of the 100 topics that were over-reported in each country, compared to other countries, from March 7 to October 9, 2016. The results of this analysis indicate that two complementary patterns–globalization and domestication–explain the media attention across the countries. We conclude that this attention can be driven not only by geographical closeness but also by more complex dimensions, such as historical relationships. Also, although a group of countries often have common media attention, their similarity level depends on time and topic.