News Values and Topics: A 15-Nation News Consumer Perspective

As the global news environment evolves, differences in news values and topics across nations are observed. This chapter presents analysis from a 15-nation, nine language survey of news consumers’ perceptions of news values and news topics. A total of 1588 responses were collected from respondents in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States. News values of proximity, prominence, and unexpectedness ranked highest, but differences were observed among the nations studied. Respondents expressed the strongest interest in news topics of science/technology, human interest, entertainment, and international affairs. These global and nation-specific findings provide a baseline for newsrooms to consider categories of content that have the greatest interest among local news consumers.