Transnational news flow have been extensively discussed in international communication studies since World War II, mainly focusing on the inequality and disconnectedness of the global media order (McMillin, 2007; Sassen, 2010).

However, the empirical evidence of the international news flow online remains inconclusive: On one hand, at a time when the world has become ever-connected online, new transnational networks have emerged in cyberspace, as shown by the contra-flow from the periphery to the core of global media systems (Guo & Vargo, 2017). On the other hand, research also notes that international news flow remains mostly closed with core countries receiving significantly more hyperlinks from the peripheral and semi-peripheral countries (Chang et al., 2009).

Previous studies regarding global news flow typically attempt to analyse and discuss news content, trying to understand why certain countries are more newsworthy than others, how much attention a country arrests from others, and how a country is portrayed in news coverage (Galtung & Ruge, 1965). In this regard, the “flow” of news is regarded as the shift of focus and the transfer of country salience – the “flow of consciousness” (Fu & Shumate, 2017).

Hyperlinks in online articles are digital navigational cues and metaphorical signposts that guide news readers through the complex information landscape (De Maeyer, 2012). Researchers have pointed out that the WWW can be seen as a distributed hypertext system consisting of a virtual network of content and hyperlinks and billions of interconnected pages (Kleinberg & Lawrence, 2001). There are various social structures hidden behind this clearly identifiable self-organising system, which can predict the development potential of a country and its interaction with other countries (Shumate & Lipp, 2008).

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