The Influence of Geopolitics and Foreign Policy on the U.S. and Canadian Media.

The United States and its media have exerted strong influence on Canada and its media. However, the salient difference of foreign policy (multilateralism – Canada, unilateralism – the U.S.) raises the question of whether major media’s coverage of each nation’s foreign policy is similar or not. If geopolitical proximity is a stronger factor than the policy difference, then media coverage of the two would be similar to each other. If this is not the case, then the difference of the two media would be evident. With content analysis and semantic network analysis of New York Times (U.S.) and Globe and Mail (Canada) on the issue of Sudan’s domestic conflict, the authors found that 1) both newspapers focus on the conflict itself and Sudan’s need of international aid, but 2) Canadian newspaper’s coverage focused more on multilateral/international help and people’s suffering from the conflict than the U.S. medium. Therefore, it may be concluded that geographical proximity exerts a limited effect on the coverage of Canadian foreign policy. Suggestions for future research are addressed. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]