Ethan Zuckerman on why rich nations dominate news
1 Oct 2010
Ever wondered why Nigeria gets so little media coverage and why places like Japan enjoy so much more attention from the world's press? That's a question that concerned internet intellectual Ethan Zuckerman while he was doing research work at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
"Japan and Nigeria both have a population of about 130 million people. But if you look at a major newspaper outside of the African continent, you are about eight times as likely to see a story on Japan as you are on Nigeria on any given day," says Zuckerman who started developing what he calls "simple tools" to build a map of the news flow generated by mainstream media sites.
Zuckerman started the project in 2003 after being intrigued about why good news stories in Africa get so little coverage. "I was thinking specifically of Ghana's election in 2000 where there was a change of power. It was a peaceful, free and fair democratic election, but there was basically no discussion of it in the global media. I was very, very interested in why certain countries like Israel are perpetually in the news and other countries seem to have to work so very hard to get into the news," he says.
The result of Zuckerman's work has been hugely expanded into a project called Media Cloud that makes it possible to ask quantitative questions about what parts of the world, what individuals, and what stories are getting the most media attention.
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Source: Memeburn
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About Mandy de Waal: @mandyldewaal
Editor, writer and researcher. *Editor of #TheFutureByDesign & The Africa Annual *Published in Africa's Greatest Entrepreneurs *Published in Rolling Stone Magazine, The Guardian (UK), Daily Maverick, Finweek, Mail & Guardian, City Press, Rapport, Moneyweb, Noseweek; Brainstorm Magazine; ITWeb, and MarkLives. *Before becoming a full time writer, de Waal founded brand agency Idea Engineers, and led the Cape Town office of Text 100.
