ABSTRACT
The amount and type of information provided to Americans about other countries has been a focus of social science researchers in mass communication for many years. One rationale for the importance of international news is that it reduces Americans’ ignorance about their world. An example of that ignorance comes from the answer the 2007 Miss Teen USA candidate from South Carolina made to the question “Recent polls have shown that a fi fth of Americans can’t locate the United States on a world map. Why do you think this is?” Although Miss South Carolina’s answer1 suggests that information is not always effectively processed, it also hints at the extent of the ignorance problem. Fortunately, however, research indicates that international news consumption has a positive impact on world knowledge, and that it infl uences people’s perceptions about what is important in the world, and perhaps even makes them less negative about “foreign others.”
