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BACKGROUND NOTES
This study can be traced to a similar project carried out in 1978 by
the International Association for Mass Communication Research (IAMCR) at
the request of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO).
Results of the study, including differing interpretations of the data,
can be found in the following:
Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi, Kaarle Nordenstreng, Frank Ugboajah, and
Robert L.Stevenson, Foreign News in the Media: International Reporting
in Twenty-nine Countries. Reports and Papers on Mass Communication No.
93. Paris: UNESCO. Also published in French.
Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi, Kaarle Nordenstreng and Robert L. Stevenson,
"The World of the News Study," Journal of Communication, 34(1):134-38
(1984). Reprinted in Michael Gurevitch and Mark R. Levy, Eds., Mass Communications
Review Year Book Volume 5. Beverly Hills CA: Sage (1985).
Robert L. Stevenson and Donald Lewis Shaw, Eds., Foreign News and the
New World Information Order. Ames IA: Iowa State University Press, 1984.
Spanish translation, Las Noticias Internacionales y el Nuevo Orden en la
Informacion Mundial, published in 1985 by Editorial Mitre, Barcelona.
Over the years, most of the participants in the project continued a
research and personal interest in the issues raised in the study and stayed
in varying degrees of professional contact, mostly through IAMCR and the
International Communication Association (ICA), an academic organization
overwhelmingly American in membership. Periodically, an update of the study
was discussed, although nothing came of it until 1993. At that time, politics
and technology came together to spur new interest in a systematic study
of foreign news and international news flow.
Politics included, of course, the collapse of communism in Central and
Eastern Europe and the accompanying questions of the role of modern communication
in the revolution. But questions of changing definitions of news, influence
of new technologies like cable and direct broadcast satellites and the
emergence of new players like CNN that didn't exist in 1978 were raised
as well. Issues such as the role of women as reporters of world news and
as makers of news had never been addressed.
Issues of technology focused on the startling changes in the collection
and distribution of news around the world, but technology influenced research,
too. In 1978, the project was coordinated by traditional mail, data were
punched onto cards, and participants relied on slow mainframe computers
to generate output that was assembled into comparative tables by the "Gang
of Four" meeting in Leicester. Only the U.S. team, which contributed
data from 17 countries and the then "Big Four" Western agencies
was able to undertake comparative analysis.
By 1993, the same global technology that made CNN possible linked most
of the original participants through email and other rudimentary components
of the Internet. Laptop computers with more computing power than existed
on 1978 mainframes were commonplace. Why not use this emerging technology
to create a global "university without walls" and expand the
range of inquiry and participation, particularly to include researchers
in smaller countries outside the West European-North American axis that
dominated communication research? And why not use the power of the Internet
to share the results, speed analysis, and encourage collaboration impossible
in the old days?
Faxes, email, and old-fashioned letters were exchanged among most of
the participants in the 1978 study with generally positive reaction. A
meeting of many of them in Tampere in the fall of 1994 gave its blessing
to proceed with Leicester and Chapel Hill sharing responsibilities of final
design and administration. Through an informal system of contacting former
students and colleagues in various countries and encouraging them to pass
along the invitation, promises of participation were received from about
70 countries. In some cases, would-be participants underestimated the work
involved or found their internal resources inadequate; in others, early
enthusiasm dwindled in the cold light of a time-consuming and -- dare we
say it? -- tedious content analysis.
Nevertheless, quantitative data from a two-day trial run in May, 1995,
were received from 41 countries. Qualitative data in the form of samples
of coverage of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the end of
World War II in Europe were received from more than a dozen.
Some modifications were made to the quantitative analysis for a two-week
period in September, 1995, selected to coincide with the United Nations
Women's Conference in Beijing.