This paper presents the first theoretical and large-scale empirical account of the visibility of major global international organizations (IOs) in news media around the world. It focuses on the everyday, continuous coverage of IOs, through which knowledge and support of IOs can be built over time. Synthesizing insights from Media Studies and International Relations (IR), I develop a theoretical framework centered on the tangibility of IOs’ work—its concreteness and proximity to audiences—as the key driver of variation in IOs’ media visibility across states. Empirically, I study the media visibility of the 40 IOs and IO bodies that form the UN System broadly defined, including virtually all the major formal global IOs. I find that the IOs are systematically more visible in states where they conduct tangible development-focused operational activity. The differences are sizeable: IO media visibility in states with the lowest levels of human development is approximately 75% higher than in highest-development level states, typically Western. The empirical analysis is based on a novel dataset of more than 3.4 million news articles in 63 languages and 135 states, accounting for 96% of the world population, spanning 2018–2021. Natural language processing-based analysis is complemented with human coding of the content of a sample of articles, further highlighting the importance of the development-focused operational activity of IOs for their media visibility. The findings have important implications for our understanding of the public image of IOs in Western states and beyond.

本文首次对主要全球国际组织 (IO) 在世界各地新闻媒体中的知名度进行了理论和大规模实证研究。它侧重于 IO 的日常、持续覆盖，通过它可以随着时间的推移建立 IO 的知识和支持。综合媒体研究和国际关系 (IR) 的见解，我开发了一个理论框架，以 IO 工作的有形性（其具体性和与受众的接近度）为中心，作为 IO 跨州媒体可见度变化的关键驱动因素。根据经验，我研究了组成广义联合国系统的 40 个国际组织和国际组织机构的媒体知名度，其中几乎包括所有主要的正式全球国际组织。我发现，国际组织在开展有形的以发展为重点的业务活动的州中，系统地更加引人注目。差异相当大：人类发展水平最低的州的 IO 媒体可见度比发展水平最高的州（通常是西方国家）高出约 75%。实证分析基于一个新颖的数据集，该数据集包含 63 种语言和 135 个国家的超过 340 万篇新闻文章，涵盖 2018 年至 2021 年世界人口的 96%。基于自然语言处理的分析与文章样本内容的人工编码相辅相成，进一步凸显了国际组织以开发为中心的运营活动对其媒体可见性的重要性。这些发现对于我们了解西方各州及其他地区国际组织的公众形象具有重要意义。