The geographic frame matters (too): How journalistic role performance varies in domestic, foreign, and mixed news.

This article examines how journalistic role performance varies according to the geographic frame of news—categorized as domestic, foreign, and two mixed types involving cross-national references—based on a content analysis of 145,817 news items from 365 outlets across 37 countries. It assesses six journalistic roles: interventionist, watchdog, loyal-facilitator, service, civic, and infotainment, finding that the service role is more dominant in domestic news, infotainment is higher in foreign news, and interventionist and loyal-facilitator roles are more prevalent in mixed news. The study also highlights that the level of country freedom, measured by the Freedom House Global Freedom Score, moderates these patterns, with freer countries showing greater prevalence of interventionist, watchdog, civic, and infotainment roles, while less free countries exhibit more loyal-facilitator and service roles. By refining the traditional domestic-foreign news dichotomy to include mixed categories, the research underscores the complexity and contextual sensitivity of journalistic practices in a globalized media environment.