This is a funny Daily Show clip playing on the (common) notion that Americans know very little about what’s happening outside (or even inside) their boarders. This time Jason Jones pits Americans against Iranians and the Iranians seem to know a lot more about US politics and geography than Americans know about Iran.
I wonder if this isn’t a display of information bias – besides for the obvious problem of the small sample size. American politics and issues are probably on the news in Iran a lot more often than we’re exposed to Iranian politics. Maybe there is some neutral terroritory that we can quiz to eliminate the information bias, which tells us nothing about the relative and subjective “informative-ness” of Americans and Iranians.
It’s a well known U.S. tendency… surely you’ve heard the term “navel-gazing”?
Non-Americans seem to be more interested in U.S. politics than Americans are in the politcs of other countries, or even international affairs.
And why exactly is this the case? When did this start, and when might this change (if ever)?
I assume it’s because we’re just used to our national politics being internationally important. Will this trend be changing?