International news, sometimes called world news or foreign coverage, is a distinct category of journalism. It involves particular newsgathering challenges and has received a significant amount of scholarly and professional attention. Different theoretical perspectives, such as media dependency theory, argue that the production and dissemination of international news has a major impact on the way local citizens understand the world.
The study of international news reveals that it tends to be produced in ways that are meaningfully different from other forms of journalism. This variance is the result of a combination of a range of factors that are rooted in the journalistic cultures of individual nations and the specific circumstances of international events. These factors include the presence of a country’s superpower status or its geopolitical importance, as well as the presence of a country in a region that has important economic and/or cultural ties to the country in question.
Analyses of international news content have also shown that events in countries that are culturally proximate or geographically close receive more coverage than those in less-close countries. This is often a result of the fact that these countries are important trading partners and thus have local impacts on things like import and export contracts with regional businesses.
The existence of these determinants should not be interpreted as evidence that national governments meddle with or dictate journalistic coverage. Rather, they are a particularly clear manifestation of existing news values, such as relevance, where developments that involve matters that are perceived to be relevant to an organization’s audience are seen as more newsworthy.