World Wide Media Perceptions of 2007

Bruno Gilles and Nicolas Kayser initiated a project that visualizes the geographical focus of selected mainstream media outlets.

The map below shows the world through the eyes of media outlets during 2007. Some countries bulge as they receive more media attention; others shrink as they are forgotten - click on the list of publications below to see the results.

First off, the list of media outlets attached to the map is very limited, and much too Euro and U.S centric. Media coverage from Africa, Asia, and South America (non-western media) would add another, interesting dimension to this map.

Most of these trends are not surprising. The map indicates that most European publications on this list focus and emphasise media coverage within their immediate area - and very little coverage goes out to developing countries in comparison.

Slate, a web-only magazine, based in Washington DC however shows an interesting trend. The predominant coverage by the online magazine focuses heavily on the Arab areas – more so than U.S based print publications such as the New York Times.

The Economist on the other hand seems to cover world news more equally than the other print publications, where as the listed Blogosphere covers most equally…this specific medium does not indicate specific country bulges, rather shows an equally distributed selection of media coverage around the world. The reason for this could possibly lie in the nature of blogging, it not being a duplicate of mainstream news, but rather focussing on hyper-local, and niche, news

This map project is highly intuitive and fascinating, as the daily news selections by editors around the world have never really been visualised like this before.

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