Mapping the media

Interesting wee mapping experiment that takes an image of the world and maps the number of stories written about different countries and lays it on top of the map. The results, unsurprisingly, tells us much of the planet goes unreported. Nicolas Kayser-Bril explains more,

These maps allow you to grasp several media trends at a glance. First, traditional newspapers are highly selective in their coverage of world news. Looking at the three British dailies, editors favour countries that are bigger and more populous, but also closer to home and better developed. They also give more room to the countries of origin of British immigrants, especially if they are white (look at the size of Australia and New-Zealand). Hardly surprising, but still disheartening, especially when you consider that the only brand that does not advocate objectivity, The Economist, covers the world more equally. via The Observers

Nicolas, along with Gilles Bruno, plan to build a “a scraper that will automatically retrieve the data for the 164 countries on several newspapers” This is all very reminiscent of Ethan Zuckerman’s excellent mapping tool. Paul Bradshaw from the Online Journalism blog is impressed and has more commentary on the tool.