All Countries Not Created Equal

COMMUNICATION RESEARCH • October 1998Chang • International Communication

TSAN-KUO CHANG

All Countries NotCreated Equal to Be NewsWorld System and International Communication

Against the backdrop of the world system perspective, the purpose of this arti-cle is twofold: (a) to propose a new conceptual approach identifying thedeterminants that may affect the structure and process of foreign and interna-tional news flow and coverage in the global setting, and (b) within this frame-work, to determine the content (what is covered) and form (how it is covered) ofReuters’ coverage of a major world event for a better understanding of whycountries become news the way they do. This study argues that all countriesare not created equal to be news in international communication. For thosecountries in the core zone of the world system, their chances of being in thenews are higher than those in the semiperipheral and peripheral strata.Nations in the other two zones will have to go through several filters beforethey make it to the news.

Since the 1950s, international communication research has attractedincreasing attention in the field, and by the early 1980s, the literature in thisarea of inquiry had reached “almost landslide proportions” (Hur, 1982,p. 531). The past 15 years have further witnessed continuing growth in thestudy of international flow of news and coverage within and without nationalborders. After the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and theformer Soviet Union in 1991, this persistent interest is reflected not only inprofessional journalistic concerns over the assumptions and challenges tonew ways of reporting the post–cold war reality (e.g., Boccardi, 1993; Gwertz-man, 1993; Heuvel, 1993; Hoge, 1993), but also in scholarly thinking of thefuture of international communication and its implications for a global publicsphere (e.g., Frederick, McCaw, & Vasquez, 1994; Mowlana, 1994; Tomlin-son, 1994). In addition to research activities at various academic conventions(e.g., special panel sessions at AEJMC, ICA, and IAMCR), a new journal,

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COMMUNICATION RESEARCH, Vol. 25 No. 5, October 1998 528-563© 1998 Sage Publications, Inc.

Journal of International Communication, devoted entirely to this field wasinaugurated in 1994, confirming to some extent Lazarsfeld’s (1976) progno-sis for opening up “new and rather exciting subjects for investigation”(p. 487).

A careful review of the literature indicates that unlike earlier case andarea research, recent studies have often gone beyond media and messagessystems in a particular country or region by focusing more on how and whythose systems interact in an international or larger context. Against thebackdrop of the world system theory (Wallerstein, 1974, 1979, 1996), the pur-pose of this article is twofold: (a) to propose a new conceptual approach toidentifying the determinants of the structure and processes of internationalcommunication flow and news coverage in a global setting, and (b) within thisframework, to determine the content (what is covered) and form (how it iscovered) of Reuters’ coverage of a major world event for a better understand-ing of why countries become news the way they do.

Although not necessarily couched in the world system perspective (seebelow), the notion of hierarchy among countries in international communica-tion has long been recognized by scholars and researchers in political science,sociology, and mass communication. This structural disparity of nationalstatus is considered an important factor in shaping the content, direction,and volume of traffic of news, entertainment, and information from countryto country, especially between developed and developing nations. It isbelieved to be rooted in the larger inequity or imbalance of distribution offinancial resources and communication technologies in the world that is gen-erally configured by historical colonialism and contemporary economic prac-tices. The controversy surrounding its consequences for national develop-ment and sovereignty, particularly those countries at the receiving end, hasbest been captured in the debates over the new world information and com-munication order since the 1970s (e.g., Masmoudi, 1979; Nordenstreng &Schiller, 1993; Richstad & Anderson, 1981; Roach, 1990; Stevenson & Shaw,1984).

Although the debates have been useful in highlighting the deficiencies ofquantity and quality of coverage and flow of news and information amongcountries, it seems, however, to have generated more heat than light in bothpolitical and journalistic communities. As far as theory building in interna-tional communication is concerned, the conceptual focus has moved awayfrom normative consideration to more analytical and explanatory inquiries.Whether micro or macro, international communication research has com-piled substantial data, both quantitative and qualitative, that should allowscholars and researchers not only to demonstrate what the state of the art is,

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especially in areas of news coverage and flow, but also to speculate on why itis so. This is not necessarily the case. In an overview of international commu-nication research, Stevenson (1992) reported that “on one hand, there are therelatively few polemics with fury but little evidence; on the other, there arethe many that document interesting facets of the field but offer no explana-tion” (p. 552). Such discrepancy means that students of international com-munication need to take a more interconnected approach to creating syner-gies between theory and research.

Heuristically, there is no lack of effort in research that conceptualizes thestructure and processes of international communication at a more abstractlevel. These exercises can be found in the following concepts and proposi-tions: concentration of power, wealth, and technology (Schramm, 1964); elitenations (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Gans, 1979; Ostgaard, 1965); system of inter-national relations and economic development (Frederick, 1993; Hester, 1971,1973; Nnaemeka & Richstad, 1979); imperialism or cultural/media imperial-ism (Boyd-Barrett, 1979; Galtung, 1971; Lee, 1980; Schiller, 1969; Tomlin-son, 1991); dependency (Meyer, 1989; Singhal & Sthapitanonda, 1996); neo-imperialism (Madec, 1981; Meyer, 1989); and social construction of reality(Dahlgren, 1982). The arguments and evidence, however, have not alwaysbeen convincing, especially when nation or culture is used as a basis of expla-nation (e.g., Stevenson, 1992). The lack of goodness of fit between the theo-retical and the empirical is also echoed in a related study by Chang and hiscolleagues (1996), leading them to suggest that international communicationresearch should bridge the gap between storytelling and theory building.This article is a modest attempt to integrate current conceptions and existingstudies of international flow of news and coverage within a global structure.The point of epistemological departure is the world system perspective.

World System and International Communication

At the risk of oversimplification, the world system theory (Wallerstein, 1974,1979, 1996) is an expansion and extension of the dependency theory. As aresult of historical forms of dependence (e.g., colonialism) and interstate eco-nomic exploitation, the dependency theory posits that the global system isfundamentally a two-tier concentric market, with the Western developedcountries at the center and the rest of the world at the periphery (Santos,1996; So, 1990). In Wallerstein’s conceptualization, this system becomes the“only one valid unit of analysis” in social science research (Ragin, 1996, p. 78).As components of this encompassing structure, countries are located in threeinteractive spheres or zones of economic, political, social, and cultural rela-tions: core, semiperiphery, and periphery (see, also, Chase-Dunn & Grimes,

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1995; Chase-Dunn & Hall, 1993). The modern world system follows the capi-talist/market logic and exhibits discernible communicative and behavioralrules among its constituting parts.

Before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the formerSoviet Union, thanks to U.S. domination and Soviet collusion, “the capitalistworld economy was able to expand from its initial European base to incorpo-rate the entire world and eliminate all other historical systems from theglobe” (Wallerstein, 1996, p. 494). Accordingly, nation-states were structur-ally subsumed under or delimited by the world system, more specifically thecapitalist economic system, through a complex interdependent network.National development or economic interaction among countries outside thecore zone was likely to lean toward either the Western camp in pursuit ofmodernization or the Soviet bloc in search of progressive communism. It is afunction of the division of labor within the world system itself, with the devel-opmentalist paradigm as a common goal among nations in the semiperipheryand periphery. After the end of the cold war, although the world systemstructure remained intact, the U.S. domination in the core will face chal-lenges from Japan and the European Union in their “struggle to obtain quasi-monopolistic control over the new leading industries” (Wallerstein, 1996, p.495). The demise of the communist bloc has apparently shifted the balance ofpower and created a new structural possibility in the prevalent world system.

In international communication, how is the world system theory relevantto concept formation, methodology, and empirical research? What are itsexplicit contributions and how does it fit into the theoretical map of interna-tional communication? Because the origins of the world system can be tracedto such theories as modernization, imperialism, and dependency (Shannon,1996) that have been influential in international communication research,its relevance in international communication falls into two broad categories:theories and methods. Theoretically, the world system unifies the study ofglobal exchange of trade and flows of capital, international relationships,national roles at the country level (e.g., Bollen, 1983; Smith & White, 1992;Snyder & Kick, 1979). These and other similar conceptions have beenexplored in international communication research, but are not necessarilyformulated at the larger system level. Methodologically, the use of networkanalysis in the world system provides a practical analytical techniquethrough which international communication patterns can be empiricallyexamined (e.g., Barnett & Salisbury, 1996; Barnett, Jacobson, Choi, & Sun-Miller, 1996; Smith & White, 1992).

The hierarchical and spatial structure of the world system consequentlydetermines the extent of a country’s development and its status in the

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international equation as a result of its location in the worldwide landscape.

On one hand, there tends to be greater traffic and interaction with members

of the core than with potential counterparts in the other two zones, and the

direction of flow often moves from higher to lower strata. On the other hand,

the location in the periphery means a country is disadvantaged vis-à-vis

those in the core. The result may be ineffective participation in external

activities or lack of internal progress among peripheral countries. In an

analysis of film imports as a form of cultural imperialism, for example,

Delacroix and Ragin (1978) found that Westernized information flows had a

negative influence on a country’s economic growth. Mass communication

across national borders can thus be located as part of the structural flows in

the world system. Its effects may be manifest in the quantity and quality of

international news flow and coverage.Several conceptual considerations are feasible and plausible in the inte-

gration of the world system and international communication. First, coun-

tries are often units of analysis or independent variables. Foreign and inter-

national events usually originate in a country, and if they move from there to

another country, the path is determined by some structural divide. Through

either historical configuration or current military, economic, and political

practices, or both, countries constitute the three strata that display a net-

work pattern (Rossem, 1996). Holistically, national structures cannot be

understood effectively without taking into account international interaction

at a higher level (Chase-Dunn & Hall, 1993; Galtung, 1971). As Shannon

(1996) put it, world system theorists consequently “speak of geographical

areas and states [italics added] as being in the core, periphery, and semi-

periphery” (p. 27). For international communication as a process, the world

system thus provides a useful macro framework charting interactive activi-

ties among countries.Second, vertical or horizontal communication is required for interaction

within and between zones in the world system. To maintain the system

status quo or to facilitate social change, countries engage in various

exchanges, such as goods and raw materials, news and information, and peo-

ple (Chase-Dunn & Hall, 1993; Wallerstein, 1974). In international commu-

nication, news and entertainment dominate research attention in the areas

of symbolic representation and creation of social reality (e.g., Dennis, Gerb-

ner, & Zassoursky, 1991; Wang & Chang, 1996). If the core nations often do

effect the action or reaction of countries in the semiperiphery and periphery,

as suggested by the world system, then events and issues from the core have

repercussions for other countries and are noted elsewhere accordingly. In

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international communication, news coverage can be considered a rippleeffect expanding outward from the center of the world system.

Third, the demarcation of core to peripheral zones with the number ofcountries varying from a few to many suggests an unequal partnershipamong nations and its inherent negative consequences (e.g., dependency) forthose countries farther removed from the center. Consistent with existingmodels in international communication, the hierarchical positions amongnations in the world landscape have resulted in disproportional quantity andquality of news flow and coverage for developing and underdeveloped coun-tries (e.g., Gerbner & Marvanyi, 1977; Gonzenbach, Arant, & Stevenson,1992; Weaver & Wilhoit, 1981; Wilhoit & Weaver, 1983). Recent studies byBarnett and his associates are exemplary, showing how different forms ofinternational communication flows, such as telecommunications (Barnett &Choi, 1995; Barnett et al., 1996; Barnett & Salisbury, 1996), studentexchange (Barnett & Wu, 1995), and telephone (Sun & Barnett, 1994), can beincorporated into the world system.

For example, in a network analysis, Kim and Barnett (1996) demon-strated “the inequality in international news flow between the core and theperiphery. The Western industrialized countries are at the center, dominat-ing international news flow. Most African, Asian, Latin American, andOceanian countries are at the periphery” (p. 344). Although not directlyrelated to international news coverage, such studies are conceptually rele-vant and analytically pertinent because they seek to ground determinants offoreign and international news flow and coverage in a larger structure—theworld system. Combining the world system and theoretical approaches ininternational communication research, a model outlining the process andoutcome of foreign and international news flow and coverage is proposed inFigure 1.

Using the world system as a conceptual departure point, the first filter ofdeterminants in international communication is a country’s location or posi-tion in the system. The system regulates the international distribution anddirection of flow. If an event or issue originates from a country in the core, it islikely to flow to other countries, particularly to those in the semiperipheryand periphery, and be picked up as news. The emphasis is a higher likelihood,not an absolute determinism. For international communication as a product,the world system is hence manifested in the content of foreign or interna-tional news that tends to focus on the core countries at the expense of noncorenations. The idea of a feudal structure in international communicationshould be illustrative.

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According to Galtung (1971), the international system is divided intospheres of central and peripheral countries in which Western industrializednations occupy the core, whereas the Third-World countries lie at the edge.Due to historical colonialism and modern imperialistic practice, the patternof interaction and communication in such a configuration tends to take placeamong countries within the center and between core nations and their formercolonies in the periphery. In other words, there is more vertical interactionbetween peripheral and core nations, but less horizontal interaction amongthe peripheries. With the semiperiphery added to the world system, the com-munication and interaction patterns should be more frequent between thecore and the semiperiphery than is any other arrangement because thesemiperiphery now serves as an intermediary zone among the three strata(e.g., Shannon, 1996). This international feudal structure has received someempirical support. Meyer (1991) found that “a world marked by neocolonialand vertical information flows is an accurate portrayal,” but “is much less

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Figure 1. Determinants of Foreign and International News Flow and Coverage

accurate when it attempts to delineate the impact of the system on develop-ing nations” (p. 236).

Although the world system is able to explain the status and access to newsof core countries in international communication, the opposite is not true forcountries in the semiperiphery or periphery. It is not necessarily a zero-sumgame. Because of the declining attention to international news (e.g., Emery,1989), the limited amount of space or time in the news media arguably wouldnot leave much room for semiperipheral or peripheral nations if core coun-tries are covered predominantly. Such argument, however, cannot satisfac-torily answer why developing and less developed countries in Africa, Asia,the Middle East, and Latin America have been covered from time to time inthe news. Coups, earthquakes, civil unrest, and other social disturbances areoften the staple of news in the West about the rest. Apparently, other filtersbeyond a country’s location in the world system also serve as determinants ininternational communication. Figure 1 proposes three more filters in a binarymechanism: event versus context, internal attributes versus internationalinteraction, and high versus low threshold of news values. Derived from pre-vious studies, these pairwise filters underscore a variety of social, political,geographical, and cultural factors at national and international levels.

Chang, Shoemaker, and Brendlinger (1987) categorized the conceptualdimensions in international news coverage into event- and context-orientedapproaches. In the event-oriented approach, factors inherent in the eventsdetermine their prominence, regardless of the context. Such attributes astimeliness, unexpectedness, human interest, continuity, or deviance standout in the clutter of daily events that pass through the newsroom (e.g., Shoe-maker, Chang, & Brendlinger, 1986). This is essentially a conventional viewof newsworthiness and is part of the second filter. In the context-orientedapproach, external factors carry more weight in news decision making,including political affiliation, economic relations, relevance, geographicalproximity, and cultural similarity. They imply explicit or implicit interactionamong countries. Defined broadly, international interaction as a filter refersto contextual connections through the interplay of history, communication,geopolitics, flow of capital and people, diffusion of technology, or conflict andconfrontation.

Considering the three lower filters in the model, a core country in theworld system is more likely to occupy the central position in the internationalcommunication network, both as a sender and as a receiver (e.g., Kim & Bar-nett, 1996). As a source, a core country has better opportunity and facility totransmit reports to other countries and thus has a higher chance of beingcovered in the news media. As a receiver, a core country’s centrality can be

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best shown not only by the amount of international newspaper and periodi-cals trade it generates (e.g., Kim & Barnett, 1996), but also by the number offoreign correspondents it hosts. In the United States, for example, more jour-nalists from around the world are permanently stationed in Washingtonthan vice versa. The situation should be true in other core countries. It allowsa core country to command foreign attention both at home and abroad ininternational communication.

The equation for countries in the semiperiphery and periphery is differ-ent. For most of them and most of the time, they do not hold the central posi-tion as either senders or as receivers in the international network of masscommunication. Any event or issue from and about those countries has tonavigate through more screening before it becomes news. In the end, thethreshold of news value must be relatively high for the event or issue to movefrom one country to another and to be covered one way or the other (e.g.,Adams, 1982; Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Ostgaard, 1965; Rosengren, 1970,1974, 1977; Stevenson & Shaw, 1984). The fourth filter has two classes ofnews most likely to pass the gate: dramatic or tragic events, such as naturaland man-made disasters, and tensions or interactions between nations, par-ticularly between noncore and core nations. Because of the added filters inthe news selection process, noncore nations are in a more difficult position todraw international news attention.

Although the model applies to both news flow and coverage in interna-tional communication, for the purpose of this study, only a partial examina-tion—news visibility of countries as a result of their structural position in theworld system—is possible. This is tantamount to testing the effects of theworld system configurations on international communication. If the model isvalid, foreign and international news coverage should follow the patternsspecified in Figure 1. Using the first World Trade Organization (WTO) Minis-terial Conference in Singapore December 9 through 13, 1996, as a case andfocusing on Reuters as a major news agency, this article contends that ininternational communication, all countries are not created equal to be news.Specifically, it seeks to test the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: Of all the countries that were present at the WTO confer-ence, the core nations were more likely to be covered than were noncorecountries.

Hypothesis 2: The pattern of network coverage of the WTO conferencewould center around the core countries.

Hypothesis 3: When semiperipheral and peripheral countries were cov-ered, they would largely be reported through their interaction with thecore nations.

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WTO Conference and Reuters

The first WTO ministerial conference was a culmination of many previousworldwide meetings at the end of the 1986 to 1993 Uruguay Round of inter-national trade negotiations. Launched on January 1, 1995, WTO replacedthe old General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which had servedas a world trade body since 1948. Its supreme authority is the ministerialconference, to be held every 2 years (Reuters, December 9, 1996). The firstconference was held December 9 through 13, 1996, in Singapore. Its histori-cal importance is exemplified by the numbers: 128 WTO member countries,34 observer governments, 49 international organizations, and more than1,000 journalists from almost every country attended the inaugural worldtrade conference.

Although a single world event, the selection of the WTO conference andReuters’ coverage for analysis is significant. In a sense, the nature of theevent itself and media organizational idiosyncrasy were held constant. Con-ceptually speaking, the conference focus—ground rules of world trade—pro-vides an observable link to the central aspect of the world system: the interre-lationship of world markets and capitalism. If core nation-states indeeddominate the world system, this world trade conference as a site should to agreat extent reflect the structural arrangement. To suggest that world tradehas always favored Western industrialized countries is to acknowledge thecentral thesis of the world system—the strengths of international connec-tions and roles based on the strategic location and empirical status of nationsin the global economic structure (e.g., Smith & White, 1992; Snyder & Kick,1979).

Methodologically, the WTO conference represents a specific event thatwould allow for a more powerful way of analysis in international communica-tion research: a closer comparison of intra- and extramedia data (Rosengren,1970). For every country involved, the event itself was fixed but its contextvaried from country to country, depending on how countries interacted withone another. With a specific agenda, each country might position itself vis-à-vis others through any form of links or paired connections among countries tobest protect or secure its own national interests. This permits an investiga-tion of the proposition that in international communication, semiperipheraland peripheral countries become more visible when they come into contactwith the core nations.

Nearly all the world’s countries were represented at the conference, mak-ing access to each country’s position and statements on the trade issues read-ily available to representatives of the news media, including Reuters. In

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addition to equal time (5-minute speeches at the official meeting), variousbriefings, news conferences, groups meetings, and bilateral negotiationswere held daily, and sideline exchanges among countries went on regularly.From a journalistic point of view, it is difficult to argue that such democraticrules of the game still keep certain countries inaccessible because of theirlack of press freedom and control over the free flow of information withintheir own territorial boundaries, as it normally would when journalists haveto apply for visa permissions to enter foreign countries.

One of the four major international news agencies, the London-basedReuters, reaches worldwide media through its daily dispatches. It had sub-scribers in 161 countries through 362,000 terminals at the time of the confer-ence. As a world leader in financial and economic news, Reuters’ coverage ofthe WTO conference stands as the best available database for the purpose ofthis study. Because of its specialty and locality, however, it is unrealistic toexpect Reuters, and for that matter any media organization, to cover in theirlimited news time and space every possible country around the world. Bothontologically and epistemologically, the news arguably can never do justice toreality itself. Given that countries were treated equally at the conference,deviation from the expected value in the news should indicate the exercise ofjournalistic paradigms. This study contends that in the world system, allcountries are not created equal to be news in international communication. Alogical question to ask is: What factors may help to reduce the uncertainty inthe process of news selection and presentation? By focusing on a single newsagency and a unique event, this case study approach (Yin, 1994) aims atdetermining not only what, but also how and why a particular phenomenonoccurs in the news.

Method

Two sources of data—official statements given by each country at the WTOmeeting and Reuters’ daily news dispatches during the first 4 days of the con-ference (December 9-12, 1996)—were collected for content analysis from thehost country’s WTO Web site and Reuters’ Web site on the Internet. BothWeb sites were specifically set up for the conference and were availablethroughout the conference. Repeated check of Reuters’ stories published invarious newspapers around the world and collected in Singapore’s WTO Website during and shortly after the conference indicated that Reuters’ Web siteincluded all the dispatches in a single news file. For this particular worldevent, Reuters had no other news files posted on its Web site.

Additional materials were gathered from the meeting schedules and theGeneva-based WTO Web site to establish a baseline of what happened at the

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conference. The last day of conference (December 13) heard no speeches fromindividual countries and featured only concluding remarks by the host coun-try and a joint declaration. Reuters’ stories released on this day were not con-sidered on the grounds that those written before the conference reached thefinal agreement should be more sensitive to the pros and cons of the partici-pants involved in the issues. In theory, when there was still room for maneu-vering and positioning among countries, and thus opportunities for policystatement and opinion expression, Reuters should have been unlikely tostamp out a closure in its coverage of the unfolding conference unless factorsother than news availability and source accessibility were at work. In fact,when the last-day stories were added, the patterns remained unchanged.

Due to differing standards, classification of countries in the three zonesmay be open to debate, particularly for some countries that may fall intoeither the core or the semiperiphery. Following a useful research strategy(e.g., Steiber, 1979), this study classified a country’s location in the world sys-tem based on a priori substantive criteria. As suggested in previous worldsystem studies (e.g., Bollen, 1983; Shannon, 1996; Smith & White, 1992; Sny-der & Kick, 1979), classification of countries as core, semiperipheral, orperipheral depends on the flows involved (e.g., monetary or trade). Althoughminor variations exist, certain countries are often located in the center,whereas many developing and underdeveloped nations are to be found in theperiphery. In this study, consistent with common classifications (Kim & Bar-nett, 1996; Rossem, 1996; Wallerstein, 1996) and considering the emergingworld news centers (e.g., Tunstall, 1992), core countries were defined toinclude the United States, European Union (as a single unit by itself with itsrepresentatives at the WTO conference), Western European countries (espe-cially the United Kingdom, Germany, and France), Japan, and Canada. Thesemiperipheral countries consist of other Western European countries (e.g.,Sweden and Switzerland) and relatively advanced economies such as SouthKorea, Singapore, and Malaysia in Asia; Argentina and Mexico in LatinAmerica; and Egypt in Africa. The peripheral countries referred to mostdeveloping and less developed nation-states, including former Soviet bloccountries. China and Russia were considered semiperipheral.

For each Reuters’ story, based on multiple coding, every country wascounted only once, irrespective of how often the country was mentioned. Thiscoding approach gave each country an equal weight in the news, as it was atthe WTO conference. Assuming all countries had the same chance of beingrepresented in international communication, it eliminated potential biasesor artifacts in coding designs that tend to favor primary/dominant and secon-dary countries. Throughout the 5 days, identical stories were excluded.

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Updated stories with additional information gathered on different days wereconsidered as separate news. The coding reliability coefficient (Holsti, 1969)of a random sample between two coders was near unity: 0.97.

Results

During the 5-day WTO conference, a total of 108 WTO member states and 16observer countries spoke at the meetings. Reuters released 116 stories, withan average of 29 stories per day. Among the WTO members, 40.7% of thecountries received at least some coverage, whereas more than half neverappeared in the Reuters dispatches. For non-WTO nations, only China, Rus-sia, and Taiwan were covered on the days they addressed the conference. Noother countries, except Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, were ever mentioned.Table 1 provides a detailed comparison between what happened at the meet-ings and Reuters coverage from Day 1 through Day 4.

When the WTO conference opened, the parameter was set for what waslikely to come in Reuters’ coverage. Although the conference procedure gaveeach country an equal platform on which to present its statement on theworld trade issues or to make its plea if it was not already a member, Reuterslooked at it differently. It not only provided apparently unequal news spacefor a few select countries, but also offered views from countries on the side-lines. The first day witnessed 50% of the countries that spoke receiving dispa-rate mention in the Reuters’ news. Most of these countries were located ineither the core or semiperiphery of the world system. The United States(86.7%) and European Union (63.3%) dominated the stories, followed by Sin-gapore (36.7%), Canada (36.6%), the United Kingdom (26.7%), Australia(23.3%), and Germany (16.7%). Japan would not speak until the next day, butits centrality in the world system could be clearly observed in the news(43.3%). China (16.7%) also made its news debut when many peripheralcountries that took the podium were side-stepped by Reuters. In the eyes ofReuters, the United States, European Union, Japan, Singapore, and Canadawere the stories of the day. As will be shown later, Singapore’s relatively highvisibility in the news was mostly a function of its interactions with the UnitedStates and Japan and was not necessarily due to its status as the host country.

The news pattern became more structured in the second day of the confer-ence. From Bolivia to Zimbabwe, 26 countries, including Russia, spoke; onlyfive countries (19.2%) received any coverage in Reuters. Unlike the first day,except for a few cases, almost all these countries were located in the periph-ery of the world system. Of the 26 countries, Japan stood out, and Reuters lis-tened, covering it extensively (64.5%). For those countries on the side, theUnited States (87.1%) and European Union (77.4%) continued to outshine

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Table 1Comparison Between What Happened and Reuters Coverage at the WTO Meeting

Countries Percentage Other Countries PercentageThat Spokea of Mentionsb Mentionedc of Mentions

n = 30 n= 30Day 1

Argentina — Japan 43.3Australia 23.3 China 16.7Austria — Malaysia 13.3Bangladesh — Brunei 6.7Brazil 3.3 Philippines 6.7Canada 36.6 Russia 6.7Colombia — Vietnam 6.7Cuba — Chile 3.3Denmark — Netherlands 3.3Dominican Republic — Saudi Arabia 3.3European Union 63.3 South Korea 3.3Finland — Taiwan 3.3France 13.3Germany 16.7Hong Kong 3.3India 10.0Indonesia 13.3Ireland —Italy 3.3Mexico 3.3New Zealand —Norway —Pakistan —Portugal —Singapore 36.7Thailand 10.0Turkey —United Kingdom 26.7United States 86.7Uruguay —n = 25 n= 31

Day 2Bolivia — United States 87.1Chile — European Union 77.4Czech Republic — Canada 58.1El Salvador — Malaysia 41.9Fiji — China 29.0Ghana — Indonesia 22.6Guyana — Singapore 19.4Hungary — Australia 12.9Iceland — India 12.9Jamaica — Russia 12.9Japan 64.5 South Korea 12.9Kuwait — France 9.7

(continued)

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Table 1Continued


Liechtenstein — Brazil 6.5Luxembourg — Hong Kong 6.5Mauritius — Norway 6.5The Netherlands — Thailand 6.5Nicaragua — Argentina 3.2Philippines 9.7 Brunei 3.2Sierra Leone — Costa Rica 3.2Solomon Islands — Mexico 3.2Sweden 3.2 Pakistan 3.2Tanzania — Taiwan 3.2Tunisia — Uruguay 3.2United Arab Emirates — Vietnam 3.2Zimbabwe 3.2n = 24 n= 21

Day 3Belgium — United States 85.7Botswana — European Union 66.7Brunei — Canada 57.1Costa Rica — Japan 57.1Ecuador — France 23.8Egypt — Norway 19.0Gambia — Indonesia 14.3Greece — Argentina 9.5Israel — India 9.5Lesotho — Germany 9.5Macao — United Kingdom 9.5Malaysia 28.6 Australia 4.8Malta — Brazil 4.8Morocco — China 4.8Paraguay 4.8 Czech Republic 4.8Romania — Hong Kong 4.8Singapore 14.3 New Zealand 4.8South Korea 4.8 Russia 4.8Spain 4.8 Tanzania 4.8Sri Lanka — Uruguay 4.8Suriname —Togo —Trinidad and Tobago —Uganda —N = 30 N= 34

Day 4Bahrain — United States 94.1Bulgaria — European Union 85.3Burundi — Canada 44.1Cameroon — Japan 38.2Cote d’Ivoire — Australia 20.6

other nations in the Reuters’ news, with Canada (58.1%), Malaysia (41.9%),China (29.0%), and Indonesia (22.6%) trailing at a distance. A few countriesthat spoke but did not appear in the news on the first day were barely men-tioned the next day. The clear configuration is that the four countries in thecore of the world system shared the news spotlight in Reuters’ coverage, withsome major semiperipheral nations standing in the shadow.

On the 3rd day after the key players had spoken, the stage for the WTOconference and the Reuters’ news attention obviously shifted from the officialschedule to sideline activities that kept highlighting the core countries.Other than Malaysia (28.6%) taking the lead, the two sessions for 24 memberstates and 11 observers generated little news for Reuters. About 15% of the

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Table 1Continued


Cyprus — South Korea 20.6Dominica — India 17.6Guatemala — Singapore 17.6Honduras — Hong Kong 14.7Jordan — Indonesia 11.8Kenya — Malaysia 11.8Madagascar — Norway 11.8Malawi — Pakistan 11.8Maldives — Egypt 8.8Mozambique — France 8.8Myanmar — Jamaica 8.8Namibia — Philippines 8.8Nigeria — Argentina 5.9Papua New Guinea — Barbados 5.9Peru — Brazil 5.9Poland 8.8 Germany 5.9Saint Kitts and Nevis — Iceland 5.9Saint Lucia — Mexico 5.9Senegal — Taiwan 5.9Slovak Republic 2.9 Thailand 5.9Slovenia — Turkey 5.9South Africa 8.8 Uruguay 5.9Switzerland 17.6 China 2.9Venezuela 2.9 The Netherlands 2.9Zambia —

Note. WTO = World Trade Organization.a. According to the conference procedure, statements by each country/entity speaker were limited to 5 minutesexcept for the inaugural speech by Singapore. Longer statements were circulated as documents.b. Multiple coding; percentages do not add up to 100. Each country in the stories was counted only once. Singaporewas coded only when it appeared as a country in the news, not as the location of WTO meeting (e.g., Singaporemeeting).N represents total number of stories.c. Organizations or groups were excluded. Underlined countries spoke as observers.

day’s speakers (five countries) made it to the news, with the rest of themnowhere to be found. Of the 21 stories issued by Reuters, at least two thirdsinvolved the United States (85.7%) and European Union (66.7%), whereasmore than half concerned Canada (57.1%) and Japan (57.1%). The persistentlineup demonstrated that in the process of news, most countries, particularlythose in the semiperiphery and periphery of the world system, were simplyinsignificant, if not irrelevant, at the WTO conference. They did not seem tohold strategic positions that would give them some news leverage in interna-tional communication.

By the last day, when almost all ministerial speakers of the 30 WTO mem-bers and four observers came from the periphery, except for semiperipheralSwitzerland (17.6%) and six other countries, none managed to attractReuters’ interest. From Bahrain to Zambia, 27 nations addressed the confer-ence, but Reuters did not hear their voices. Although these countries werehardly out of sight, they definitely were out of the Reuters’ news mind. To theextent that news appearance was concerned, Reuters had lowered the cur-tain for most noncore countries as the 4-day plenary sessions drew to an end.Again, the core nations—the United States (94.1%), European Union(85.3%), Canada (44.1%), and Japan (38.2%)—rounded up a disproportionatenumber of the 34 stories released by Reuters. What is more significant, coun-tries that spoke but failed to make news on the last day were almost outnum-bered by nations that did not speak, yet somehow ended up in the Reuters’dispatches. Speaking at the conference apparently was not enough for acountry to come across as news. It may take the country itself and, by default,its world position, to become a newsmaker.

Such a structural inequity in news making can best be seen when the over-all picture during the 5-day WTO conference is examined. As reported inTable 2, of the 48 countries covered more or less by Reuters, 13 countriesappeared daily throughout its dispatches: the United States, EuropeanUnion, Japan, Canada, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Indonesia, China,France, India, South Korea, and Brazil, in that order. All other countrieswere scattered over the time span. Among the 13 nations, a hierarchicalpattern emerged, setting them apart along the world system divide. InReuters’ news, the top four countries were located in the core, whereas thesecond-tier nations could be found in the semiperiphery, except for France,which certainly was subsumed under the European Union. Findings in bothTable 1 and Table 2 supported the first hypothesis that core nations of theworld system were more likely to be covered than were noncore countries atthe WTO conference. A closer look at the comparison of Reuters’ coverage of

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countries among the three strata of the world system should be moreilluminating.

Table 3 examined the number of countries mentioned in the Reuters’ newsand the percentage of stories devoted to countries in each of the world system

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Table 2Countries Covered by Reuters at the WTO Meeting

Countrya Reutersb (%)

United States 88.8European Union 74.1Japan 50.0Canada 48.3Malaysia 23.3Singapore 21.6Australia 16.4Indonesia 15.5Chinac 13.8France 12.9India 12.9South Korea 11.2Norway 8.6United Kingdom 8.6Germany 7.8Hong Kong 6.9Philippines 6.9Russiac 6.0Thailand 6.0Brazil 5.2Switzerland 5.2Argentina 4.3Pakistan 4.3Mexico 3.4Taiwanc 3.4Uruguay 3.4Brunei 2.6Egypt 2.6Jamaica 2.6Poland 2.6South Africa 2.6Vietnamc 2.616 WTO members 0.9-1.764 WTO members —n = 108 n= 116

Note.WTO = World Trade Organization.a. Entries include countries that spoke at the WTO meeting from Day 1 to Day 4 (December 9-12, 1996). TheUnited States, European Union, Japan, Canada, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Indonesia, China, France, India,South Korea, and Brazil were covered throughout the conference.b. Based on multiple coding, percentages do not add up to 100. Each country in the stories was counted only once.Barbados and Vietnam did not speak but were covered.c. Non-WTO member.

zones. Over the 4-day period, Reuters delivered nine stories (7.8% of thetotal) that mentioned only one country: three stories about countries insemiperiphery or periphery and the rest in the core. Saudi Arabia, the world’slargest oil producer and exporter, was covered in a short story about its inten-tion to join WTO. The Reuters’ dispatch, however, did not originate in Singa-pore, but rather from Dubai. Zimbabwe’s representative was quoted in a longarticle (Reuters, December 10, 1996) that did not mention any other coun-tries (Reuters, December 10, 1996) as saying that the Uruguay Round agree-ment “represents a balance of interests between developed and developingcountries.” As the host country, Singapore appeared in a brief story indicat-ing that it had no plan to end Singapore Telecom’s monopoly, an idea relatedto WTO’s efforts to liberalize telecommunication services around the world.It was evident that coverage of these three countries had more to do with thehigh threshold of news values due to either internal attributes or externalcontext than otherwise.

The predominant majority of Reuters’ stories (9 out of 10 stories or 92.2%)concerned two countries or more. Almost all of them included the countries inthe center, no matter how many countries might be involved. When up to fourcountries were reported, the semiperipheral nations appeared, on average,in fewer than 50% of the stories. If five or more countries were identified inthe news, however, the semiperiphery began to show up as frequently asthose in the core, suggesting an increased connection between the two zones.For those countries in the periphery, their chances of news appearance,whether individual or collective, tended to be slim. Their best bet was whenthe number of countries in the news and members in the other two zonesbegan to expand or grow as a block. Table 3 lent further support to the firsthypothesis.

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Table 3Comparison of Reuters’Coverage Among Core, Semiperipheral, and Peripheral Countriesa

Percentage of Stories Covering Countries in

Number of Countries Mentioned Core Semiperiphery Periphery Total

1 66.7 11.1 22.2 92 95.2 23.8 4.8 213 100.0 66.7 — 94 100.0 34.8 — 235 100.0 100.0 8.3 126 100.0 100.0 12.5 16>7 100.0 100.0 53.8 26Total 116

a. Based on multiple coding, percentages do not add up to 100, except for the first row.

Against the backdrop of the world system perspective, the main conten-tion of this article is that all countries are not created equal to be news ininternational communication. This proposition is tested using extramediastandards (WTO membership and WTO conference speaker list) and intra-media data (Reuters’ coverage of countries). Table 4 presented the compari-son between these two sets of data across five world regions: Africa, Ameri-cas, Asia, Europe, and the Pacific. Africa (29.7%) had more countries in theWTO than did the Americas (25.8%), Europe (21.9%), and Asia (18.8%),respectively. Roughly speaking, not counting the Pacific region, countries inthese four regions were evenly represented at the conference, with nearly thesame number of ministers or representatives from each region.

In the Reuters news, however, the picture was undoubtedly out of consid-erable proportion. The deviation from what happened was particularly nota-ble in its news treatment of Africa. With almost a quarter of speakers (23.1%)at the WTO conference, not to mention its nearly one third of WTO members,all of Africa fared poorly in the news (9.1%). In contrast to the Pacific regionor to North America, which had less than 5% of countries in either category,Africa was significantly underrepresented. As a newsmaker in internationalcommunication, Australia alone carried greater clout than did all the Africancountries combined. In line with the world system equation, the loss of Afri-can nations’ news visibility, of course, represents gains by other countries,especially those in Europe (31.8%) and Asia (27.3%). Compared to the twoextramedia yardsticks, 1 in 10 African countries (10.8%-15.4%) had a chanceto be covered by Reuters, whereas 4 out of 10 nations in every other region

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Table 4Comparison of Reuters Coverage at the WTO Meeting Across Regions

WTO Countries Reuters’ % of WTO % ofRegion Membership That Spokea Coverageb Membershipc Countries That Spoked

Africa 29.7 23.1 9.1 10.8 15.4Americas 25.8 25.0 27.3 36.4 44.4

North 2.3 2.8 6.8 100.0 100.0South 23.4 22.2 20.5 30.0 37.5

Asia 18.8 21.3 27.3 50.0 52.2Europe 21.9 25.9 31.8 50.0 50.0Pacific 3.9 4.6 4.5 40 40.0Total 128 108 44

Note. WTO = World Trade Organization.a. Entries represent distribution of member countries that spoke at the WTO meeting from Day 1 to Day 4 (Decem-ber 9-12, 1996).b. Entries represent distribution of member countries covered by Reuters. Based on multiple coding, each countrywas counted only once in the same story.c. Percentage of WTO membership = Reuters’ coverage/WTO membership.d. Percentage of countries that spoke = Reuter’s coverage/countries that spoke.

(36.4%-52.2%) could be expected to do so. North American countries nevermissed the news limelight. Chances for countries to become news in interna-tional communication are indeed unequal and may often depend on where acountry finds itself in the larger world setting.

The data so far do not tell the complete story regarding how countries maybe linked in the Reuters’ news within and between the five world regions orthe three zones of the world system. In this article, countries in the samestory were counted once as a pair regardless of how frequently or conspicu-ously those countries were identified. The assumption is that when two coun-tries appear simultaneously in the same story, some types of interactive rela-tionship between them, whether real or imagined, are implied. First, as anews source, a country may purposefully engage another country in its delib-eration of words or deeds. This is most likely to occur in the areas of foreignpolicy or international relations in which conflicts or cooperation will inevita-bly bring two countries together in the news, if not in reality. Second, even inthe absence of others in its own action or reaction, a country’s position mayturn out to be significant when it is juxtaposed in the news with that ofanother country. Such journalistic practices create a public space in whichcountries interact with one another without necessarily going through anyprotocol or protrusion against others. Either way, a form of network coverageis established to suggest the focus of news prism or locus of activity in inter-national communication.

Unlike previous world system studies that use countries as units of analy-sis, this study looks at the stories themselves in which countries can begrouped together because of their common presence in the news. The patterndescribed below is therefore not based on any formal network analysis (e.g.,Barnett & Choi, 1995; Kim & Barnett, 1996), but rather on an analysis of net-work coverage similar to citation networks (e.g., Griffith, Drott, & Small,1980). For whatever reason, identifying a country in the news undoubtedlyindicates its importance or salience in international communication. Co-coverage of countries in the same story allows the identification of clusters ofnations and strengthens the argument that an important grouping has beenidentified. The co-coverage network is one particularly useful type. Its link-ages are based on the frequency with which two countries are coveredtogether in the same story. Figure 2 detailed the key couplings of WTO coun-tries that were reported by Reuters during the 5-day conference (see Table 2).Given that on the average, each country received fewer than one story, theminimum threshold was arbitrarily set at three stories so that a country wasnot included in the network unless it was comentioned at least three timeswith another nation. The number accompanying the line between two

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549

Figure 2. Network of Countries Covered by Reuters at the WTO MeetingNote. WTO = World Trade Organization. Entries represent frequencies of WTO countries in the same region co-covered by Reuters in at least three different stories from Day 1 through Day 4(December 9-12, 1996,n= 116.) Based on multiple coding, each pair was counted only once in the same story. Frequencies of co-coverage between the United States and other countries were as fol-lows: India, 16; Indonesia, 16; South Korea, 11; Norway, 10; United Kingdom, 8; Germany, 8; Philippines, 8; Hong Kong, 7; Pakistan, 5; Switzerland, 5;Thailand, 5; and Brunei, 3. Other cross-zonelinkages are not shown.

countries in the same region denoted their frequency of co-coverage. Thelarger the number, the more frequently those countries were covered byReuters simultaneously in different stories from Day 1 through Day 4. Thedata for the co-coverage matrix of countries are reported in Table 5.

Among the 28 nations in Figure 2, four core countries—the United States,European Union, Japan, and Canada—dominated network coverage. Thesecountries also occupied a central position within their own sphere of influ-ence, connecting many semiperipheral nations to the core in the news net-work. For example, the United States and Canada each functioned as a linkto five Latin American countries (Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, andJamaica) in the Reuters’ stories. The European Union stood at the forefrontfor six European countries (Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Poland, Britain,and France) and two African countries (Egypt and South Africa), served astheir news gateway to the core of the world system. Japan could be found in acomplex news web with 10 other Asian nations. The emerging ASEAN coun-tries as a power bloc in Asia probably explained the formation of such anetwork.

As far as international communication is concerned, the above configura-tion seems to underline the structural imbalance in news coverage of core,semiperipheral, and peripheral countries. Within the world system, the find-ing supports the second hypothesis that network coverage of WTO countrieswould center around the core nations. Moreover, the striking similaritybetween this study’s pattern of news coverage and that of Kim and Barnett’snews flow (1996) in the global setting suggests the validity of the world sys-tem perspective as a conceptual framework in the study of determinants ininternational communication. To some extent, it also confirmed Tunstall’s(1992) observation that following the United States, Europe has become aworld news leader. With various linkages to other Asian countries, Japanmay not be far behind as a key newsmaker.

The data in Table 3 and the pattern in Figure 2 show a certain degree ofcorrelation between appearance of core and semiperipheral countries in theReuters’ stories. They do not, however, address how and why these countriescame to be included in the same stories. Part of the answers can be found inthe comparison of co-coverage among the three zones (Table 6). As noted ear-lier, the co-coverage network provides an indication of where the action is orwho the actors are in international communication. It also delineates the ver-tical and horizontal relationships within and between zones, as suggested inGaltung’s (1971) feudal structure and the world system. The diagonal entriesdenote interstate connections within each zone, whereas entries in the lowerhalf represent interstate linkages between zones.

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Of the 107 stories involving at least two countries, the predominant formof network within zones was that of core-core interaction, withsemiperiphery-semiperiphery grouping less visible, and periphery-periphery connection the least visible. The dramatic decrease from core(88.8%) through semiperiphery (45.8%) to periphery (9.3%) is clearly consis-tent with the proposition of the world system perspective: the domination ofthe core in international activities. Such a pattern holds in cross-zone com-parisons that show core-semiperiphery coverage (67.3%) leading the news,followed by core-periphery (16.8%) and semiperiphery-periphery (15.9%) at adistance. The link of semiperiphery to the core evidently increased its cover-age in the news. For the peripheral countries, this is not the case; whether

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Table 5Co-Coverage Matrix of Countries by Reuters at the WTO Meeting

Countries Argentina Australia Brazil Britain Brunei Canada

Argentina 3AustraliaBrazil 4BritainBruneiCanada 3 4EgyptEuropean Union 17 7 52France 4Germany 7Hong KongIndiaIndonesia 3Jamaica 3Japan 9 48KoreaMalaysia 3Mexico 4NorwayPakistanPhilippines 3PolandSingapore 3SwitzerlandSouth AfricaThailand 3Uruguay 4United States 4 17 5 8 3 53

(continued)

within or between zones, they were inconspicuous or nearly nonexistent inthe news linkage.

Throughout the 5-day WTO conference, Reuters’ dispatches underscoredthe activities of core countries at the expense of other nations. This confirmsthe world system perspective and provides additional evidence supportingthe second hypothesis. When semiperipheral and peripheral countries didappear in the news, they were more likely to be seen in the company of corenations than were those from the same zone. This partly confirms the thirdhypothesis that these countries would be reported largely through theirinteractions with the core nations. The question is: What kind of interac-tions? A detailed comparison between the official positions of all countries at

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ArgentinaAustralia 17BrazilBritain 7 4 7BruneiCanada 52Egypt 3European Union 3 11 8France 11 4Germany 8 4Hong KongIndiaIndonesia 5 6JamaicaJapan 52 4 8Korea 8Malaysia 11MexicoNorway 8 5Pakistan 3Philippines 5Poland 3Singapore 7 5Switzerland 6South Africa 3 3ThailandUruguayUnited States 80 8 7 16

Table 5Continued

Countries Egypt European Union France Germany Hong Kong India

(continued)

the conference and their coverage or lack thereof in the Reuters’ news shouldreveal the interactive mechanism that might be present.

At the WTO conference, in addition to routine trade issues, two otherissues seemed to stir concerns or interests among various groups of coun-tries, especially those in the center: the nexus of trade and core labor stan-dards and the Information Technology Agreement. Although the latter wascommercial, the former was highly political. Each had different agendas andimplications for the WTO countries. How countries lined up on these twoissues and whether they landed in the Reuters’ dispatches may serve as agauge of what makes news for a given country. Table 7 reported the extrame-dia data gathered from official statements presented by each country at themeeting.

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9

3 33 48 4

52 85

5 4 86 8 11 3

12 7 10

12 8 147 8 310 14 3 3

36 4 3 5

11 11 6 93

4 3 3 5

16 56 11 27 4 10 5

Table 5Continued

Indonesia Jamaica Japan Korea Malaysia Mexico Norway Pakistan

(continued)

The four core or so-called Quad countries—the United States, European

Union, Japan, and Canada—were pushing for either the linkage between

world trade and basic labor standards or the Information Technology Agree-

ment or both at the WTO conference. Although there was dissent or disinter-

est among those nations in the core of the world system, they tended to act in

unison. Chances were high for them to be covered by Reuters. The fact that

the peripheral countries appeared to be irrelevant, if not insignificant, in

international communication can be easily seen in Table 7. Regardless of

whether they supported or resisted the nexus between world trade and labor

standards, their views were mostly ignored in the Reuters’ stories. To be

more specific, when they opposed the idea, on one hand, most of them (82.1%)

did not make it to the Reuters’ news; should they fail to address the issue, on

the other hand, many more of them (85.7%) remained invisible in the news.

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Argentina 4 4Australia 17Brazil 5Britain 8Brunei 3 3 3 3Canada 53Egypt 3European Union 3 6 3 80FranceGermany 8Hong Kong 5 7 7India 5 16Indonesia 6 11 4 16JamaicaJapan 4 11 3 56Korea 3 6 3 11Malaysia 5 9 5 27Mexico 4Norway 3 10Pakistan 5Philippines 5 4 8Poland 0Singapore 5 5 22Switzerland 5South AfricaThailand 4 5 5Uruguay 3United States 8 22 5 5 3

Table 5Continued

South UnitedCountries Philippines Poland Singapore Switzerland Africa Thailand Uruguay States

Being on the periphery in the world system was a catch-22 situation in inter-national communication.

As noted earlier, semiperipheral countries had a better chance to be in thenews when they interacted with the core nations one way or another. Data in

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Table 6Comparison of Network of Countries by Reuters AmongCore, Semiperipheral, and Peripheral Zonesa

Core (%) Semiperiphery (%) Periphery (%)

Core 88.8Semiperiphery 67.3 45.8Periphery 16.8 15.9 9.3

a. Each pair of zones was counted only once, regardless of how many countries might be included in each zone.Based on multiple coding, total percentages do not add up to 100. Only stories involving at least two countries wereconsidered (n = 107).

Table 7Comparison Between a Country’s Position and Its Coverage by Reuters at the WTO Meeting

Reuters’ Coverage

Country’s Positiona Yes No Total

Nexus of trade and labor standardsCore Yes 8 1 9

No 1 1 2NA 1 — 1

Semiperiphery Yes 3 4 7No 13 — 13NA 6 2 8

Periphery Yes 2 1 3No 7 32 39NA 6 36 42

Total 47 77 124Information Technology Agreement

Core Yes 9 — 9No — — —NA 1 2 3

Semiperiphery Yes 10 3 13No — — —NA 12 3 15

Periphery Yes 2 1 3No — — —NA 13 68 81

Total 47 77 124

Note. WTO = World Trade Organization.a. A country’s position on the two major issues is based on its official statement at the WTO conference. NA meansthat the two issues were not specifically addressed by the country.

Table 7 bear this point out. On the trade and labor standards issue, of the 28semiperipheral countries present at the conference, a country had a higherchance of being covered by Reuters if it came out against the connection,arguing instead that the issue should be dealt with by the InternationalLabor Organization, not by the WTO. Among the 22 countries receiving somecoverage in the Reuters’ news, almost 60% of them rejected the idea favoredby the core nations. As it turned out, the stronger their rhetoric against theproposal, the higher their exposure in the news. For example, the Malaysiandelegate categorically argued in the official statement against linking thetwo: “Discussion and debate on the issue of labor standards have proven to bea divisive factor. For Malaysia, we reject any attempt to link labor standardsand other social clauses to trade and trade action, and we also reject any moveto discuss and deliberate labor standards and other social clauses in theWTO” (official statement, December 11, 1996). It is no coincidence thatMalaysia was the leading semiperipheral country reported in the Reuters’news (see Table 2). Findings in Table 7 provide additional evidence support-ing Hypothesis 3.

Conclusions and Discussion

Although this article is essentially a case study of one world event reportedby a single news agency, the choice of the specific event within a larger con-text is theoretically significant and methodologically sound. Theoretically,international communication among the 162 countries represented at theinaugural WTO conference is bound to occur. The setting itself provides anideal site at which to determine how that interaction may take place. It alsoweakens a journalistic presumption that news and information on most ofthe world’s developing and less developed countries are often hampered bylack of access to the sources. Methodologically, the use of both extra- andintramedia data makes it possible to closely examine the content and form ofinternational news flow and coverage. The extramedia data can be used toestablish a baseline for what happened (Rosengren, 1974), and its compari-son with the pictures in the news should be more powerful in hypothesis test-ing (Rosengren, 1970). Although the present study provides only a partialtest of the model in Figure 1, several conclusions can be drawn.

First, in conjunction with findings from previous international news flowresearch, the network patterns of news coverage of countries by Reuters sug-gest that there is validity in the integration of the world system as an encom-passing conceptual approach to the study of determinants of internationalnews flow and coverage (see also Meyer, 1991). Such an overall frameworkposits that the structural disparity among countries in the world system

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tends to be, among other filters, the foremost threshold through which acountry has to pass before it will become news. Beyond this point, whether acountry will show up as news in another country takes two uneven routes:one straight, the other crooked, as a function of a number of internal andexternal factors.

The literature in the field since the 1950s has assembled voluminous stud-ies that document quantitative and qualitative differences in the amount,content, and direction of mass communication across national borders. Thefindings in this article further indicate that all countries are indeed not cre-ated equal to be news in the structure and processes of international commu-nication. The flow and coverage of international events may not recognizenational boundaries in the age of information technology. However, they mayfail to originate in the first place or could be stopped in the process if the local-ity of the country in the world system or the centrality of events in the jour-nalistic paradigm remains relatively farther removed from the point ofreference.

Second, for the few core nations in the world system, their chances to be inthe news are much higher than are those of countries located in thesemiperiphery or periphery. In contrast, the news appearances of mostsemiperipheral countries are more likely to be determined by the companythey keep, usually the core nations, whereas the peripheral nations mayhave to leave it to chance (e.g., natural disasters). When the internationalcommunication network involves just a few countries, the peripheral onesare largely out of the loop. What they may do or say does not matter much orcarry enough weight to put them in the news. Their best opportunity seems tobe in cases in which the international network expands to include a biggercrowd of countries when they may therefore be in a position to share somespotlight with the core and semiperipheral nations in the stories. In otherwords, peripheral countries are dependent on nations in the other two zonesto give them a lift or ride in the international marketplace of ideas. Thisdependency means that in international communication as both a processand a product, peripheral countries will frequently be sidelined when there islittle room for inclusion. It is a game of poor country out. As far as the worldsystem is concerned, no news may not be good news for the peripheral coun-tries that are being left out in the process of mass communication acrossnational borders. It means that they are structurally more remote in theworld system and journalistically less essential in news reporting. Given thedynamics of the world system and the partial design in this study, whetherthere is a causal or nonlinear relationship in the news flow and coverage net-work, of course, remains to be further examined.

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Third, if the semiperipheral countries resist the domination of core coun-tries in the global setting as they did at the WTO conference, they may be ableto carve out a spot in international communication, generally not because oftheir ability to make news in their own right, but by virtue of the conflictsbetween the powers that be and the emerging power centers. It is a form ofinternational interaction that shapes and is shaped by the shift of power bal-ance in the world structure. When the status quo is seriously threatened, asHallin (1986) argued, it creates a sphere of legitimate controversy, providinga window of opportunity for the challenger to make news. In a sense, a coun-try is more newsworthy in international communication when it stands indi-vidually or collectively against a major player in the game. This appears to bethe case for many semiperipheral WTO countries that were covered byReuters as power blocs (e.g., ASEAN).

Fourth, a hierarchy exists in Reuters’ coverage of the three strata of theworld system. Within each zone, countries do not necessarily enjoy similartreatment in the news. Some countries seem to be able to command morenews attention than do other nations in their own league. If this within-zonedifferential pattern is any indication of the structural inequity among theworld’s nations, then the between-zone imbalance further suggests a funda-mental equation of inherent disequilibrium of the world structure that hasprofound implications, not only in news, but also in reality, for all the coun-tries involved.

It is probably telling when the representative of Fiji, a tiny South Pacificcountry with a population of three quarters of a million, vented his frustra-tion over the micro-macro world economic relationship at the WTO confer-ence this way:

We are told in a forum such as this, that we are all equal and we have alevel playing field. However, when I consider my inability to influenceopinion, to mobilize razor-sharp executives who lobby convincingly onour behalf, to stage-manage events as they unfold, and my lack ofauthority to influence the debate, then I realize that there is no levelplaying field in trade, and some are indeed more equal than others.(official statement, December 10, 1996)

To the extent that international communication is a manifestation of theworld system arrangement, findings in this article obviously support hisobservation. Notwithstanding, more research is needed to determinewhether the same pattern repeats itself in different social units. Using datacollected from six countries during the same period, a larger comparative

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project will look closely into the structure of this playing field in the worldsystem and the impact of its configurations on the flow of news and coveragein international communication.

Note

1. This is a revised version of an earlier paper presented to the Communication The-ory and Methodology Division at the 1997 Annual Convention of the Association forEducation in Journalism and Mass Communication, Chicago, Illinois, July 30 throughAugust 2, 1997.

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