I am aware that I have shared some reflections on the tension between fiscal- and monetary over the past few years, usually in our Friday’s Beers and Plots series. At this series I share some reflections and we discuss the broader global and local developments in a group of academics, economists and policy folks.
One of the reflections I had shared with some students in 2023 relate to the monetary system and to me, I can rationalize a lot of current policy moves from the US. And in fact, they are not inconsistent with the so-called Mar-a-Lago Accords. I have also shared these thoughts with some friends with a high level of access in policy making circles. Of course, I am far from alone in having these thoughts and so this mostly serves as a way to keep my own record. This is also linked to my work on the Media, Economics and Geopolitics and the earlier work on the media multiplier, which highlights how “bad news” can stick and lead me to the conclusions that stories are the weapons of war in a service-sector trade escalation.
There is so much to be said but too few words to say it. But to me, as the world learns more about Artificial Intelligence, and the intricate link between (reinforcement) learning and how the human brain works, this will become ever more clear. So what is this figure showing?
It is easiest explained looking at the underlying data. Ultimately, this figure summarizes data pertaining to more than 470+ news sources attached to more than 120 countries around the globe. The same data was used to study cross-border media coverage around natural disasters. In total the corpus that is used here covers around 150 million+ news articles that each have been tagged or coded by their relative geographic “aboutness”. That is, an article that appears in, say the German news outlet Spiegel Online, that reports on Donald Trump’s policies would be counted as one news article on the pair Germany and US (or more precisely, Spiegel Online versus US).
We map the geographic aboutness of all articles that appear linked and then, focusing among the foreign news, what share is attached to each other country. That is, we ask, on average, what other foreign countries is the German, Italian, Ethiopian, Ecuadorian, etc news media reporting on. We then average this across the globe to arrive at the above figure.
What does this highlight?
This highlights that, by far, the United States receives a huge amount of attention. We see that China, Russia, the UK, France and Germany also receive a bit more “attention”, on average, compared to all other countries. But nothing trumps or dominates the US.
This does highlight: the gaze of attention is on the US, highlighting to me a key fundamental psychological origin of the US’s exorbitant privilege. Its dominance in the information and attention space. The “gaze” is going to the US, no matter what, no matter where. This may be a blessing or it may be a curse.
At this point this is a hypothesis
While direct empirical studies linking the United States’ dominance in global media coverage to a psychological inclination for leadership or guidance are limited, several theoretical frameworks and observations provide insight into how such media prominence can influence perceptions and expectations. But there exists ample arguments. For example, George Gerbner’s cultivation theory indicates that prolonged exposure to media content shapes individuals’ perceptions of reality. If global audiences are consistently exposed to American-centric news and entertainment, they may begin to view the U.S. as the standard-bearer for political, cultural, and social norms, further entrenching its role as a perceived global leader.
I had covered this in my keynote at the Shared Perspective (SHAPER) event in Bologna in 2023, where I also outlined how a potential “optimal” mixture may look like moving into the future. But it may challenge some conceptualizations of “sovereignty” and it will most definitely require that those that form the translating layer are positively selected with their human kindness being one of the most important selection mechanisms.
