Since 2015, GNV has been quantitatively and qualitatively analyzing Japan's international media coverage, with a focus on major mass media such as newspapers and TV...analysisThe GNV has been conducting a series of surveys on the international news coverage of Japan since its establishment. In this report, we examine the long-term and overall trends in Japan's international news coverage, based on data accumulated by GNV since its establishment for the past 10 years by the Asahi, Mainichi, and Yomiuri newspapers. While there have been many events that have captured the world's attention over the past decade, such as armed conflicts, elections, and infectious disease epidemics, there have also been many events that have not received as much attention as their severity. At a broader level, there was also an uneven distribution of coverage across countries, regions, and topics. Including these and other factors, what trends were seen in international news coverage over the past decade? This section analyzes the long-term trends and looks at the background of these trends in Japan's international reporting.

GNV's survey covers articles that appear in the morning editions of the Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, and Yomiuri Shimbun from 2015 to 2024. international reporting as defined by GNV.standardThe articles were collected and data was gathered on the number of words in the article, the country or region in which the article appeared, and the topic of the article. All of this data is available on a special page in the GNV, "news dataThe data are listed in the "Data" section of the website, and all data are available for the three companies by country, region, and category.

Stacks of newspapers (Photo:Radu Razvan / Shutterstock.com)

Changes in the overall volume of international press coverage

First, we would like to look at the absolute volume of articles in the international press over the past 10 years. Below is a chart showing the monthly and annual data trends. Basically, the average number of words has remained between 3 and 4 million per year, and the number of articles has remained between 300 and 600. The overall trend can be seen as a slight decrease from 2020 to 2021, and then an increase again after 2022. For the Yomiuri Shimbun, the overall number of reports increased after 2022 from earlier years. The Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun also showed a slight increase from 2021 to 2022, but returned to their original levels after 2023. For more detailed data, see GNV's "news dataIt is included in the pages of

The decrease in the amount of media coverage in 2020 is thought to have been due to the spread of the new coronavirus. It can be assumed that the increase in coverage of the domestic infection situation and the government's response to it led to a decrease in the number of words devoted to international reporting. The trend of another increase after 2022 will be discussed in a later section, but one possible reason is that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has attracted a great deal of attention.

Bias and changes in the way countries are treated in the international press

In this section, we would like to look at the amount of coverage per country over the past decade. The figure below shows the amount of international media coverage for each country on a world map, with the higher the coverage, the darker the color. In terms of the amount of coverage by country, there is a large difference between countries that receive coverage and those that do not, with Japanese newspaper coverage concentrated in a few countries. On the other hand, the majority of the world's countries and regions receive almost no coverage, showing how biased the international coverage by Japanese news organizations is. For individual data on each company, please refer to the Reporting DataSpecial pageThe information is published in the following section.

Next, we look at the top 10 countries in terms of media coverage. The results are shown in the figure below, which shows the total amount of media coverage for the 10 years in descending order of volume: the United States, China, Japan (*1), Russia, South Korea, North Korea, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, France, and Israel. Looking at the data by year, the U.S. ranked first, followed by China (*1), Russia, South Korea, North Korea, Ukraine, the U.K., France, and Israel, in descending order of total media coverage. All three companies' coverage tended to be similar in terms of the countries they reported on.

The trend of high volume of reporting on the U.S. and China was the same as for other media and for each single year. In the past, GNV'sarticleAs discussed in the previous section, the Japanese press is extremely interested in the U.S., and this is evident in the data for the past 10 years. The same strong interest in China is also evident in the media coverage of the country, which is often associated with Japan, the U.S., and South Korea.numerousThe Japanese press has been a major source of information on the world's most important issues. Behind this trend is the fact that the Japanese press isegocentrismThe news reports are also based on information from Japanese government officials, which makes it easier to cover events that are important to the Japanese government. In addition, the fact that we use Japanese government officials as our sources of information makes it easier for us to cover events that are important to the Japanese government.reasonIt can be thought of as a

The countries ranked third and below were also generally the same countries featured, with some differences in ranking and country. First, countries geographically close to Japan, such as South Korea, North Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, appeared frequently in the top 10. The security situation in the East Asian region has always been a focus of attention, and because these countries are Japan's neighbors and culturally close to Japan, they tended to be mentioned more frequently in all years. In addition, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom were often among the top 10 countries in any given year. The United Kingdom, in particular, was frequently reported in 2016, the year of the referendum on the decision to leave the European Union, while France and Germany were also frequently mentioned due to their strong political and business ties.

Other countries receiving varying amounts of attention in each year were France, Syria, and Greece, which ranked 5th, 7th, and 10th, respectively, from 2015 to 2016. For France, the focus was on media coverage of the terrorist attacks in 2015, and for Greece, the economic crisis. For Syria, the escalation of the conflict between Bashar Hafiz al-Assad's regime and the rebels may have been the reason for the boost in the amount of coverage. There was also a large increase in the volume of coverage on Hong Kong from 2019 to 2020, likely due to the significant attention given to the pro-democracy protests against China. Furthermore, Myanmar in 2021, Ukraine and Russia after 2022, and Israel and Palestine after 2023 tended to see extreme increases in the volume of coverage when conflicts in their respective regions began.

This is especially true in the case of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, where Ukraine received almost no coverage prior to 2021, but only in the first half of 2022, it accounted for 95% of all conflict coverage, more than the United States or China.resultThis was the case. On the other hand, during the same period, there were also large-scale armed conflicts in countries such as Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Yemen, but these countries were reported in a very small percentage of the GNV's pastsurveyThis is evident in the

For individual data of each company, please refer to the press dataSpecial pageThe information is published in the following section.

Changes in regions covered in the international press

Next, we will look at the rankings by region as well. The ranking results for each newspaper are shown in the figure below. In all years, the top three regions were Asia, North America, and Europe, which together accounted for about 90% of the total. In that year, much of the discussion was about the political economy in Europe, including the terrorist attacks in France, the economic crisis in Greece, and the debate over the UK's exit from the EU. This was followed by the United States from 2016 to 2021, which was number two overall, accounting for about a quarter of the total. Only in 2022 was there a difference from the other years, with Europe number one, Asia number two, and North America number three due to coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. For North America, most of the articles were related to the U.S., with very little coverage of Canada and Mexico.

What is striking about the results is the small amount of coverage given to Latin America, Africa, and Oceania. In all years and in all newspapers, it was a very small percentage, only a few percent of the total. The African region has a large population,Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire)and ... andSudanThere has been a long and large-scale conflict in theSahel regionBut there have been numerous conflicts, terrorist incidents, coups d'etat, and humanitarian crises, and by 2024, the world's victims of terrorismMore than halfare even said to be occurring in the region. However, their coverage was very low, in contrast to the coverage of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict described in the previous chapters. For the individual data of each company, the reporting dataSpecial pageThe information is published in the following section.

Changing Themes in International Reporting

Next, we will examine trends in the topics covered in international news coverage over the past decade, which GNV categorizes as follows: politics, economics, military, war/conflict, demonstrations/riot, terrorism, incidents, self, environment/pollution, healthcare, society/life, science and technology, arts and culture, sports, and education. In addition, the results of the survey are shown in the following figure. The results are shown in the following figures: the first shows the percentage of data for the 10-year total; for the 10-year total, politics had the highest percentage at 45%, followed by economy, war/conflict, military, and social life as the main topics, with other topics having very small percentages.

The second figure shows the number of words in news coverage on the vertical axis and the time axis from 2015 to 2024 on the horizontal axis, representing the change in the amount of words in each category of coverage. For example, in the Mainichi Shimbun's coverage, the percentage of coverage on the military increased significantly in early 2016. This was related to the nuclear test conducted by North Korea in January of the same year, which received significant attention from the Japanese media; in 2018, news about the trade friction between the U.S. and China shows an increase in the percentage of economic coverage.

After 2020, this trend changed at two points in time: the first was the new coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Coverage of health care, which had previously received very little coverage, increased significantly, with politics coming in second. The impact of the pandemic of the new coronavirus on the press at that time and the interest in the topicheightSecond, there was a significant increase in articles on wars and conflicts after 2022, with the Russian-Ukrainian conflict that began in 2022 and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that began in 2023 receiving the second most coverage after politics for the next three years due to their major coverage. The trend of heavy coverage of politics was consistent, but topics such as conflicts and viral pandemics received heated coverage in a short period of time. The individual data of each company is also shown in the report data.Special pageThe information is published in the following section.

Analysis of international press coverage: Why do "high-profile conflicts" and "low-profile conflicts" occur?

So far we have looked at quantitative data on international news coverage over the past decade. We will discuss some of the characteristics of news coverage over the past decade that have emerged from this review and consider what lies behind them.

First, with regard to conflict coverage, the concentration of coverage on a few conflicts and the transient nature of the coverage can be characterized. While various conflicts have occurred over the past decade, the amount of coverage of some conflicts, particularly the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has been extremely large. This is due to a variety ofprimary factorare intricately intertwined, but it is thought that the strong association with and interest in high-income countries in the U.S. and Europe has influenced the concentration of news coverage.

On the other hand, coverage of other conflicts, while temporarily concentrated, is extremely small in volume compared to the wars listed above. For example, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported 14,069 and 2,320 words on the conflict in Sudan in April and May, respectively, immediately after the outbreak of the conflict in 2023. The conflict has continued since then, with seriousHumanitarian Damageoccurred, the volume of coverage remained at around 1,000 words or less in subsequent months, and remained the same in 2024. Also, beginning in 2014 and continuing to the presentYemenin the United States and Russia are rarely covered in conflict reporting, despite the involvement of major powers such as the U.S. and Russia. Why is there such a bias in the reporting of conflicts and unrest?

The International Atomic Energy Agency meeting on Ukraine (Photo:IAEA Imagebank / Flickr [CC BY
2.0])

One possible explanation is that the intensity of interest in high-income countries such as Japan and Western countries influences the amount of coverage. In the past, GNV has shown that the Japanese press is influenced by the interest in the U.S. press.pointing outAs we have been doing, it is easy to report news in line with the interests of high-income countries, including Western countries. For example, the Ukraine-Russia conflict is an issue that directly affects the security of Europe, and the U.S. is also interested in it because of its large amount of military aid. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also widely reported due to its political relationship with the U.S.numerousThe following is a list of the most common problems with the

The volume of reporting is likely to increase as Japanese news organizations also consider conflicts of high interest in these high-income countries to be important. The location of overseas bureaus is also relevant to conflict reporting. While many Japanese news organizations dispatch a large number of correspondents to Europe, Asia, and the U.S., in comparison, the Latin American and African regionsreporting locationare few. It can be assumed that conflicts in the African region are less likely to attract attention, since regions with fewer bureaus are less interesting to news organizations from the start and do not have sufficient resources to cover the conflict.

Analysis of International Press Coverage: Concentration of Press Coverage after the New Coronavirus Epidemic

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the pandemic of the new coronavirus in 2020 had a major impact on politics and economics around the world and attracted a great deal of attention in the international press. In the first place, health-related coverage normally accounts for less than 1% of all international coverage, but in the year 2020 alone, health-related coverage followed politics in accounting for 17.61 TP3T of all international coverage, an increase of more than 50-fold from the 0.3% of the previous year. While an infectious disease epidemic of this magnitude was certainly an anomaly, there have been other infectious diseases over the past decade that have had a significant impact on the world. Tuberculosis, for example, is a global epidemic that claims 1.6 million lives annually, mainly in low-income countries.infectious diseaseHowever, the reality of this situation is rarely covered in the regular international press. HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) and malaria are other infectious diseases that continue to claim the lives of many people around the world, but are rarelyreportNo.

In addition, looking at the number of people infected with the new coronavirus, Latin America, such as Brazil and Argentina, and Asian countries, such as India, also have a large number of infected people.ratioHowever, looking at international coverage by country for the same year, the majority of reports were on the U.S., China, and Europe, with less coverage on countries in the Global South, which are expected to be less equipped with medical facilities and treatment environments. Why such a difference in coverage of the same infectious disease?

UNICEF staff members show off a container carrying a vaccine for the new coronavirus to members of the press (photo:UNICEF Ukraine / Wikimedia Commons[.CC BY 2.0])

One reason is that this virus has had a very direct impact on Japan and other high-income countries. Tuberculosis and malaria are infectious diseases that are spread mainly in the African region, but in the first place, the Japanese press is not interested in low-income countries.thinTherefore, it is expected that there will be less press coverage of these infections. Another reason cited is that the virus was new and its threat potential was unknown. The new coronavirus was a newly identified infectious disease in December 2019, which may have attracted greater attention in the international press because it was newer and more likely to attract public attention than existing infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV. In fact, past GNVsurveyIt has been noted that the press tends to focus on new infectious diseases in the

Analysis of international coverage: Why so much coverage of "politics," "economics," and "conflict"?

Finally, regarding the bias of news themes reported, we will look at why there are so many topics related to politics, economics, and war/conflict: "politics," "economics," and "conflict" remain at the top in all years, except after 2020, when "healthcare" rises to the top due to the new coronavirus epidemic, They account for about 70% of the total. On the other hand, "environment" and "society" are consistently underrepresented, often making up only a few percent of the total. Why is it that coverage is concentrated only on a few topics?

A possible explanation here is that media coverage in Japan is biased toward an elite-centric focus. A past GNV survey found that much of Japan's international reporting is centered on state institutions and their officials.pointing outThe first time, the reporter was a member of the press. In international reporting as in domestic reporting, reporters often report on politicians, bureaucrats, and other political figures. Accordingly, the volume of coverage is greater on places and people where power and wealth are concentrated, such as politics and economics. In addition, with regard to conflicts, the sensationalism of the intense movement ofacceptanceIt is easier and more likely to receive a greater volume of coverage. On the other hand, events and issues that occur far away from the general public and government, such as society, daily life, and the environment, are less likely to be covered and receive less media coverage.

Journalists attending the press conference (Photo:Tsuguliev / Shutterstock.com)

summary

So far, we have looked at the long-term, macro data on Japan's international coverage over a 10-year period; some trends remained the same throughout the decade, while other characteristics tended to change from year to year. The two largest countries, the U.S. and China, received the most coverage in any given year, and the overwhelming focus on the U.S. in particular was consistent in all years. Conversely, the extremely low coverage of low-income countries and countries of the Global South was also a trend seen in all years. On the other hand, some topics, such as conflict and health care, showed significant variation in some areas depending on the events and occurrences that took place that year.

Even though we are a news organization, as a commercial enterprise, we are subject to the interests of our viewers and readers, the wishes of our sponsors, and many other factors.element (e.g. in array, in programming, in programming)It is difficult to report everything that is happening in the world objectively, comprehensively, and as it is, as far as the "Mere Old Man" is concerned. However, the attitude of placing importance not on the content and magnitude of the impact of world events, but on the place where the events occur and the countries and people affected by them, is questionable in the way a news organization should behave.

We, the readers, will have to take in information with a certain suspicion that the world we see through the media is always distorted and biased in some way. We need to act with a high level of media literacy by looking at the same event from a different media outlet, or by investigating the background of a reported event from our own perspective, rather than just unthinkingly believing the information in front of us. In particular, we have no choice but to access information on international news through multiple media outlets, as it is a foreign event. However, it is important to keep in mind that this information is influenced by a variety of factors.

GNV uses its own database to provide quantitative data on international news coverage, world affairs (Global Viewand news analysis (News ViewThrough content such as this, we aim to provide as objective and comprehensive a view of the world as possible. In addition, this time, we will provide comprehensive data for the 10 years from 2015 to 2024.making available to the publicThe data is presented in a new format. GNV will continue to disseminate information in order to "communicate the unreported world.

1 Counted when Japan was included in an article that GNV judged to be international reporting. For example, in the case of an article on Japan-U.S. relations, the article itself is counted as international reporting, and the relevant countries are treated as Japan and the U.S.

Writer: Takumi Kuriyama

Data: Past GNV members involved in data entry

Graphics: Seita Morimoto, Data Team

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