Abstract

What information do people search about other countries and why? In this study we coded and analyzed more than 15,000 Google searches related to France and Spain during a 16-year period, from 18 countries with diverse characteristics and relationships with France and Spain. We coded these search queries into topical categories. We also collected country-level variables to reflect the power of each country and its proximity to France and Spain. We studied the associations between the components of power and proximity of countries and their search topics. Our findings reveal that the power and proximity of the searching countries can predict much of their search topics with some specific differences between France and Spain. While economically powerful countries tend to search more for travel destinations, poorer countries search more for sports. Richer countries with geographic proximity tend to search for shopping and transportation, while poorer countries with historical and cultural proximity search more for language and education opportunities. We propose an integrative model to assess the different dimensions of power and proximity of countries and discuss the implications of our findings to theories of global information flows.

摘要

人们搜索有关其他国家/地区的哪些信息，为什么？在这项研究中，我们在 16 年期间对来自 18 个具有不同特征和与法国和西班牙关系的国家/地区的 15,000 多次与法国和西班牙相关的 Google 搜索进行了编码和分析。我们将这些搜索查询编码为主题类别。我们还收集了国家层面的变量，以反映每个国家的实力及其与法国和西班牙的距离。我们研究了权力的组成部分和国家的邻近性及其搜索主题之间的关联。我们的研究结果表明，搜索国家的实力和邻近度可以预测他们的大部分搜索主题，但法国和西班牙之间存在一些特定差异。虽然经济强国倾向于更多地寻找旅游目的地，但较贫穷的国家更多地寻找体育运动。地理接近的较富裕国家倾向于寻找购物和交通，而历史和文化接近的较贫穷国家则更多地寻找语言和教育机会。我们提出了一个综合模型来评估国家权力和邻近度的不同维度，并讨论我们的研究结果对全球信息流理论的影响。