Reykjavík Grapevine - 17.07.2015, Blaðsíða 21

21The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 10 — 2015
I read on. “Birta Guðrún Brynjarsdóttir is a three-
and-a-half-year-old girl from Reykjavík,” the ar-
ticle’s lede said. “She eats oatmeal for breakfast and
takes cod-liver oil. The Vitamin D in the cod-liver
oil is especially good for Icelanders over the winter
when the sun doesn’t shine as much.” That’s hardly
newsworthy, I thought.
Further delving into the story, I learned that
Morgunblaðið was, in fact, reporting on a photo
story in the New York Times entitled “Rise and
Shine: What kids around the world eat for break-
fast.” While that piece was interesting in its own
right, the Morgunblaðið article seemed out of place,
as the newspaper’s audience—Icelanders—would be
hard-pressed to find anything newsworthy about
Birta’s breakfast—or, indeed, the health benefits of
cod-liver oil. Based on the emphasis in the headline,
coupled with the article’s complete lack of substance
in terms of news, it seemed that Icelandic media
considered the appearance of an Icelander and her
breakfast in the paper of record to be an important
story in and of itself.
Over the next few days, I came across a number
of similar stories in which the Icelandic media re-
ported on the international press reporting on Ice-
land. The way the Icelandic media framed its cover-
age gave the impression that Icelanders are deeply
preoccupied with international attention, and, in
particular, how they appear in global media. Re-
gardless of how trivial a topic was (“Icelandic House
On The New York Times Website), local media
would excitedly pick up the story, focusing near-ex-
clusively on the fact that Iceland had made the news
abroad. The headlines furthermore seemed to fall in
either of two categories: “The world noticed us” and
“The world likes us.”
While one should be careful assigning a psyche
to a group of people, these kinds of articles seem to
indicate a nation suffering from a collective histri-
onic personality disorder. The title of this article,
“PRAISE ME,” is a mnemonic for the symptoms of
the condition, which is characterized by a need to
be at the center of attention, a distorted self-image, a
self-esteem based and dependent on the approval of
others—rather than a genuine sense of self-worth.
Researching the topic, I discovered that I was far
from the first person to notice Icelanders’ apparent
obsession with their standing in the international
media—indeed, Grapevine has through the years
published several articles that either gently mock
the phenomenon or take it as an indicator of under-
lying social ills.
However, I started to wonder: is one of the key
underlying assumptions of my social critique true?
That is, does the Icelandic press actually cover these
kinds of articles frequently? And does their coverage
then betray the nation’s preoccupation with being in
the spotlight and its need for external validation?
To find out, I systematically investigated the me-
dia coverage of such stories over a ten-year period,
from 2004 through 2013. Specifically, I decided to
analyze how Iceland’s two dailies, Morgunblaðið
and Fréttablaðið, and their online counterparts,
mbl.is and visir.is, picked up
and covered articles about Ice-
land in the New York Times, which the Icelandic
media often describes as a “stórblað” or “major pa-
per,” as if to highlight the impressive feat of being
featured there.
A preoccupation with being in
the spotlight
Based on articles like “Icelandic Girl in the New
York Times” and “Icelandic House on the New York
Times Website,” one might assume that Iceland is
essentially starved of international media attention,
forcing it to tout and celebrate even the briefest nod
in its direction. However, it turns out Iceland that
received a fair amount of coverage in the New York
Times from 2004 through 2013, with the words
“Iceland” or “Icelandic” mentioned in roughly 3,000
articles, and the country specifically featured in 445
of them.
Of the 445 articles featuring an Icelandic person,
place or entity over the ten-year period, Iceland’s
dailies Morgunblaðið and Fréttablaðið (including
their online versions mbl.is and visir.is) picked up
39%, or 173 of them.
Typically, as the number of articles about Ice-
land in the New York Times increased, so too did the
number of articles picked up by the Icelandic media.
However, the number of stories picked up did not in-
crease in proportion to the number of articles that
appeared in the New York Times, which suggests a
threshold with regard to the number of articles that
will be picked up.
For instance, when the New York Times publish-
es a great number of articles about a single Iceland-
related subject in a short period of time, it stands to
reason that the media is not going to pick up every
one of those articles. Thus, two highly newsworthy
events—namely, the financial crisis and Eyjafjal-
lajökull eruption—have likely skewed the results. If
the articles featuring those subjects were excluded
from October 2008 and April 2010, Iceland’s overall
pickup rate for the ten-year period studied would be
45% rather than 39%, which is perhaps more repre-
sentative of Iceland’s interest in basking in the glow
of the international spotlight.
Also revealing is the way the Icelandic dailies
tend to frame their coverage of those articles. As re-
flected in their headlines, more than half of the arti-
cles place explicit emphasis on the fact that the New
York Times deemed Iceland or an Icelandic person,
place or entity worthy of coverage.
Not only does the media seem to revel in external
validation, as one might glean from headlines such
as “Iceland Is a Nice and Interesting Society,” or “A
Special Favorite of the New York Times,” but it also
finds the attention itself newsworthy, as one can
read into headlines like “Iceland Is Receiving Atten-
tion,” “Receiving Attention from North America,”
“Receiving Widespread Attention Abroad,” and
“Receiving Worldwide Attention.”

Is this normal for small island
nations?
As Iceland’s apparent fascination with international
media coverage and its need for recognition from
abroad could be considered fairly normal for a small,
fledgling nation, I took on an analogous study of the
Maltese dailies most equivalent to Morgunblaðið
and Fréttablaðið for their coverage of New York
Times articles about Malta over the same ten-year
period.
Although physically much closer to mainland
Europe than Iceland, the island nation of Malta is
home to roughly the same number of people and it
too was formerly a colony, gaining its independence
in 1964, twenty years after Iceland. Yet, Malta does
not appear to harbour the complex emotions that
Iceland has with regard to its place in the interna-
tional spotlight. Despite the fact that Malta was fea-
tured much less frequently in the New York Times
than Iceland, Malta’s dailies, Times of Malta and the
Malta Independent, seemed to find the occurrence
far less newsworthy, picking up just 8% of the ar-
ticles.
Not only was the Maltese media less interested in
covering New York Times articles about Malta, but
it also did not seem to view an article about Malta in
the New York Times as a newsworthy event in and
of itself. Looking at the 15 articles in the Maltese me-
dia that cited a New York Times article about Malta,
only two of headlines expressed the sentiments “We
are getting attention” or “We are liked,” which are
so prevalent in Icelandic coverage. In the rest of the
cases, the point of these articles was not to highlight
that the New York Times had featured Malta, or a
Maltese person, place or entity, but rather to use the
New York Times as a source for substantive news.
Which arguably seems like a saner practice.
So while no one comparison is perfect, the re-
sults of my study at least suggest that Iceland’s ten-
dency may not be true of all small island nations
with past lives as colonies, that it is perhaps unique
to Icelanders.
This article is based on a study of how
Iceland’s dailies, Morgunblaðið and Frét-
tablaðið (including their online sites mbl.is
and visir.is) picked up and reported on ar-
ticles about Iceland in the New York Times
(including its website nytimes.com).
Getting the articles
Using the New York Times Article Search
API, every article containing the words
“Iceland” or “Icelandic” was retrieved
from 2004 through 2013, including those
sourced from AP, Reuters, Bloomberg News
and the International Herald Tribune (now
called the International New York Times).
From roughly 3,000 results, which were
exported to a .csv file with fields for the ar-
ticles’ publication date, headline, abstract,
section, source, and url, 445 articles were
distinguished from those that simply men-
tioned Iceland in passing. These 445 arti-
cles were placed into categories that mostly
approximated newspaper sections and as-
signed a unique subject.
Determining the
pickup rate
To determine the rate at which Iceland’s
dailies picked up articles featuring Iceland
in the New York Times, the term “New York
Times” was searched for in Morgunblaðið
and Fréttablaðið via CreditInfo’s Fjölmiðla-
vaktin, which has a database of articles
scanned from those papers. Additionally,
mbl.is and visir.is were searched separately
for the term via their respective search func-
tions.
Next, an article featuring Iceland in the
New York Times was flagged as being picked
up if an article in the local media specifically
referenced that New York Times article.
An article in the New York Times was not
flagged if an article in the local media simply
discussed the same topic or loosely refer-
enced international coverage.
More analysis
Additionally, the headlines of articles in the
Icelandic media were placed into the cat-
egories: “We are liked,” “We are not liked,”
“We are getting attention,” and “Other.” It
should be noted that articles in the “Other”
category could have placed emphasis on the
fact that Iceland or an Icelandic person,
place or entity was liked or received atten-
tion, but this fact was not apparent from the
headline, alone.
What about Malta?
Rinse and repeat with Malta’s equivalent
dailies.
Browsing the news this past October, a headline on lo-
cal newspaper Morgunblaðið’s website caught my eye:
“Icelandic Girl In The New York Times.” My interest
was stoked. Who was this Icelandic girl, I wondered,
and why was she in the New York Times? Had I missed
some sort of nationally relevant accomplishment? Was
there a new Björk-type person coming up? An Icelandic
criminal abroad?
Words by Anna Andersen
Illustrations by Bobby Breiðholt
PRAISE
ME! Does the media betray a nation’s need for external
validation?
Behind
The Scenes:
How Was
This Study
Conducted?
Continues over