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I agree that there is certainly a US focus in the world, but you could frankly replace “US” with any G8 member or China, and everything you’ve listed would be t

by jaabe 8y ago

I agree that there is certainly a US focus in the world, but you could frankly replace “US” with any G8 member or China, and everything you’ve listed would be true for me. It would also be true for all our Scandinavian neighbours. I’m part of what you could fairly call the cultural elite of my country, and as such I’m not representative for every Dane, but knowing what goes on in important countries, is frankly part of being a small nation. Anyway, that also means the US doesn’t dominate as much as you might think. Even with Trump, the most important countries in our news sphere much of this year have been Sweden (election), Germany (der mutti crisis and CDU chairman), France (reforms and later revolts), Russia (Putin being evil in a new way each month) and Britain (brexit).

qwertay 8y ago
As an Australian I know the names of quite a few Chinese cities but I think I know a whole lot less about the country because of the language barrier and the fact that most of the websites I use are blocked in china so I don't meet the people online much.
- cromwellian 8y ago
  Language barrier would prevent memory of a lot of these. Consider the Shaanxi province vs the Shanxi province. It’s much harder to recall things you can’t spell in you vocabulary to break them down and where pronunciation is similar.
lordnacho 8y ago
> Anyway, that also means the US doesn’t dominate as much as you might think. Look at Berlingske today. There's a story about the US/China trade war that's brewing, there's a story about the US stock market going down, there's a story about the US government shutting down, and a story about a hypothetical US withdrawal from Afghanistan. By contrast, there's an opinion piece about Ireland and Brexit. And there's story about Germany and China. And it tends to be like this. All the other countries are there from time to time, but the USA is always there x3.
- jaabe 8y ago
  The American government is in a budget crisis, even so, it’s not a major story in the printed version of Weekendavisen, Børsen or Information this weekend. I’ll agree that the more populist papers, like Berlinske, are very US focused and so are a lot of the free internet news. I was not trying to say that we aren’t US centric. The very first thing I wrote was literally that I agreed that we are, but the US hasn’t owned our news cycle every month of 2018, far from it. Obviously is an important part of our news cycle, but so is every G8 country, and in my social circles people follow those countries as closely as we follow the US.

by jaabe 8y ago

qwertay 8y ago

As an Australian I know the names of quite a few Chinese cities but I think I know a whole lot less about the country because of the language barrier and the fact that most of the websites I use are blocked in china so I don't meet the people online much.

cromwellian 8y ago
Language barrier would prevent memory of a lot of these. Consider the Shaanxi province vs the Shanxi province. It’s much harder to recall things you can’t spell in you vocabulary to break them down and where pronunciation is similar.

lordnacho 8y ago

> Anyway, that also means the US doesn’t dominate as much as you might think. Look at Berlingske today. There's a story about the US/China trade war that's brewing, there's a story about the US stock market going down, there's a story about the US government shutting down, and a story about a hypothetical US withdrawal from Afghanistan. By contrast, there's an opinion piece about Ireland and Brexit. And there's story about Germany and China. And it tends to be like this. All the other countries are there from time to time, but the USA is always there x3.

jaabe 8y ago
The American government is in a budget crisis, even so, it’s not a major story in the printed version of Weekendavisen, Børsen or Information this weekend. I’ll agree that the more populist papers, like Berlinske, are very US focused and so are a lot of the free internet news. I was not trying to say that we aren’t US centric. The very first thing I wrote was literally that I agreed that we are, but the US hasn’t owned our news cycle every month of 2018, far from it. Obviously is an important part of our news cycle, but so is every G8 country, and in my social circles people follow those countries as closely as we follow the US.