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.