Global Stories, Regional Perspectives: Using the Newly Available BBC World Service Content in Nexis® to Inform Business & Academic Research

BBC’s award-winning language services deliver a wealth of material - impartial, balanced and accurate news, information and analysis, covering political, social, and cultural issues, science, technology, and sports around the world. Putting developments in their respective territories in a global context.

Alongside content from BBC News Arabic - the BBC’s first non-English language service, which started in 1938—you can now access news and information from a number of BBC language services:

• BBC News Arabic
• BBC News Afrique (in French)
• BBC News Brasil (in Portuguese)
• BBC News Chinese
• BBC News Korean
• BBC News Mundo (in Spanish)
• BBC News Russian
• BBC News Turkish

4 ways BBC World Service benefits research

The BBC World Service has earned a reputation for the depth of its coverage, offering stimulating and inspiring content from a global point of view. How does this help with different research needs?

1. Capture a multicultural perspective to inform product development or expansion into emerging markets Commisceo Global notes, “Culture comes in many shapes and sizes. It includes areas such as politics, history, faith, mentality, behaviour and lifestyle.” And getting it right is critical. We’ve all heard the horror stories of product or expansion plan fails because of a cultural oversight. Even the biggest names in technology, retail and automotive industries have suffered setbacks because of blind spots in their understanding of a new market. Leveraging BBC World Service content in combination with other regional sources of news and business information can help organizations map out well-informed plans that deliver positive results. Likewise, this global, multicultural perspective is invaluable to students, providing context for a range of academic research topics.
2. Conduct background research to develop in-depth stories. Global news sources like BBC World Service can provide context based on people’s reactions, opinions, or attitudes about an event or trending topic. This can help media producers prepare for insightful interviews or journalists dig deep to offer well-rounded stories that look at issues at hand with an international outlook.
3. Identify potential risks at a global level. By making use of this world-renowned source of breaking news, you can stay alert to emerging events that could disrupt your supply chains—even when they happen in other countries. Whether it’s a typhoon in the Philippines or a worker strike in another part of the world, BBC World Service covers it.
4. Make confident decisions based on multi-source verification. Whether you are a seasoned information professional or an undergraduate just starting the journey, there’s no escaping the rampant spread of misinformation and fake news. As a result, it’s more important than ever to implement a media literacy best practice—validating research findings by seeking out multiple sources. As Scientific American once noted, “In the same way that experimental scientists can't rely on the results of just one experiment to prove something, relying on just one information source for knowledge is a sure way to end up with unreliable information.” With the addition of BBC World Service, users have another valuable source to corroborate findings before making critical business decisions.

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